Zombocalypse Now
by T.J. McFadden
Summary: In the closing days of World War Z, Captain Leonard Sykes is sent on a covert mission deep into the Red Zone: Find renegade Colonel Walter Kurtz and terminate him "With extreme prejudice". Along the way he discovers the darkest secret of the war.


Zombocalypse Now

by

T.J. McFadden

Parte the Firste...

Columbus.

Shit.

I'm still in Columbus.

Waiting for my orders. Waiting for my mission. Getting soft. Getting weak.

Zack isn't getting soft. Zack exists on nothing. Zack waits forever, or makes more of his kind. Every moment I'm here, I get weaker and Zack gets stronger. We come out here and we dream of the end of our tour, of the bars, of sex, of going home. There's no going home for Zack. He's always out there, waiting, watching. Hungry.

_This is the end, beautiful friend._

_This is the end. My only friend, the End._

_Of our elaborate plans, the End._

_Of everything that stands, the End._

_No safety or surprise, the End._

_I'll never look into your eyes, again..._

I lie on my bed, waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for The Mission. I've been in the army since I was 19 and I've never learned to wait for the mission.

My missions are special. Not putting down zombies. Not for me. My last mission had been killing an old man, up close, seeing the life leave his eyes. So close I could feel his last breath on my face.

I chain-light another cigarette, blow smoke at the overhead fan. Listen to the song on the radio.

_Can you picture what will be,_

_So limitless and free,_

_desperately in need of some strangers hand,_

_in a desperate land..._

In a world where most soldiers are putting down the dead, I put down the living. Wet Work. Sanctions. Quietly, out of sight. Can't let people know that the living are fighting each other. One death to stop a war. One life for thousands. That's the formula. Like the old man I killed. He was loveable, charming, sweet. With his vision of a thousand tiny Americas. His followers who hung on to his every word, armed with every kind of abandoned weapon in the world. No good against zombies, but deadly to the living. Anti-tank missiles, Stingers, tanks, laser-guided bombs, jets, a thousand people with enough firepower to blast out the heart of a city. Ready to fight, following the man who led them through the zombie apocalypse when everyone else abandoned them.

Mourning when he was found dead, his trusted second-in-command hiding the murder weapons.

It took me two months of living with them to set that up. Two months of being among them, winning their trust, becoming their friend. Winning the friendship of the old man and his nephew, his trusted second in command. Looking into their living eyes...

_Lost in a roaming wilderness of pain..._

_and all the children are insane._

_Waiting for the summer rain._

They gave me a month's leave, to wind down. I went home for two weeks to a wife I didn't recognize. I didn't say two words to her, until I said "yes" to the divorce. I came back early and sent three requests up the line for another mission. They were denied. They finally caved when I threatened to resign.

I wanted a mission. For my sins, they gave me one. It was a hell of a mission. When it was over, I'd never want another.

_Father, I've come to kill you..._

"Colonel Walter Kurtz, West Point, Class of '82. Graduated top of his class. Branch specialty: Infantry. Won his CIB in Grenada the following year. Graduate of Airborne School, Air Assault School and Ranger training. Joined Delta Force in 1989. Led a special forces group in Kurdistan before and during Desert Storm. He made full Colonel just before Iraqi Freedom kicked off. He retired, two years later." The Major looks young, clean cut, very earnest. The General and the Colonel are silent, one movie-star handsome, the other square and blocky. I look at the file pictures in front of me. Kurtz has chiselled features, a big roman nose. Handsome. His list of decorations and citations covers two pages.

The briefing room is an oven in the midsummer heat. It's an old high school, now Fifth Army Corps Intel HQ for the Midwest. Ever since the siege of Columbus was broken in Year Four.

The General speaks. "Colonel Kurtz was brilliant. An outstanding officer, in every way. When he retired, to take a position with the Walderberg Group, the army felt that loss very keenly. He did outstanding work as liason for the Walderberg Group, particularly after we lost the Center for Disease Control in the fall of Atlanta. Walderberg became our last hope in trying to understand and control the Z-virus. When he wasn't helping them liase with the military, he was in charge of security for their main facility, in west virginia. When that center went up, a year ago, he was missing, presumed dead. Very few people came out of there alive. A tragedy, or so we thought. But six months ago, he surfaced again. Fighting Zack, but with methods that were.. unacceptable." He tries to find another word for it and can't. "Unacceptable."

The Colonel speaks. "We picked up these broadcasts, coming out of the mountains of West Virginia, somewhere near Charleston."

He clicked a CD player.

_"Radio interecept number 33454 slash alfa, zero-three-thirty hours, Zulu time."_

_ "I saw a zombie today._" Even through the RF distortion and static, his voice has power. Then it sinks into mumbles, almost a whine. _"It was crawling through razor wire, crawling towards me. The wire was slicing out chunks of it's rotted flesh. It was cutting itself apart as it came closer to me. Slicing away one strip of flesh after another. Until there was nothing but bones and scraps of rotted flesh. It looked up, and I saw my own face. That is my dream. That is my nightmare."_

I study his face, memorizing it. I would see it again. Weeks in the future and hundreds of miles away I would meet him face to face. Up a river that snaked through the war like the spinal column of a decaying corpse, plugged straight into Kurtz's skull.

The CD clicks off. The Colonel speaks. "When Kurtz resurfaced, he was leading a private army. Wandererers, renegades, some of his own security force from Walderberg. From a fortress, somewhere in the hills, they were killing everyone. According to Kurtz, anyone who wasn't part of his force would inevitably become a zombie."

The Major speaks, handing me more paper. Transport authorizations, requisitions, orders that have nothing to do with what my real job is. "You are to enter Colonel Kurtz's area posing as a disaffected officer. Join with his force and when you see your chance, terminate him."

"Terminate." The Colonel purses his lips in distate. "With extreme prejudice."

The Major speaks. "Of course, this mission is on a need to know basis, under the same orders as were involved in the Louisville incident. If you recall?"

"Sir, I have no knowledge of any incident in Louisville. If I did have knowledge of any such incident, I would not reveal that knowledge or discuss any of the details of any such operation. If questioned, I would deny any knowledge of such an incident."

"Very good, Captain. Dismissed."

###

They drive me out to Columbus Airport. Columbus is the place where things went right. When everyone else was panicking and heading west, the Governer of Ohio gathered the State Police, the National Guard, anyone who could carry a gun. A four-lane highway, Route 270, surrounds the town. It became their firebreak, the barrier that no Z ever crossed. The entire remaining population was dragooned into labor battalions. Outside the 270, the suburbs were stripped of supplies and burned to ash, the ground left open so there was nowhere for Zack to hide. Then they sent out monster patrols, hundreds of people at a time. They wiped out zack with civilian weapons and earth moving equipment while the military was still trying to find a way to use heat seeking missiles and laser-guided bombs. Columbus became the largest Blue Zone east of the Rockies.

There were stories they also told, of those who refused to work or fight being sent out as human bait, of alzheimers patients and the critically handicapped being allowed to die during the hungry second winter, when the grain in the elevators ran out. Stories. But when the US Army finally marched back east, they found the center of Ohio being farmed and the open fields clear of Zack.

I kept reading as we went to my ride. When I got out of the Hum-Vee and looked up, I stopped. I had to look again to make sure, then checked my orders. The Lieutenant and corporal with me laughed at my reaction. I'd expected insertion by chopper.

It was a blimp. A huge grey blimp. Damn near the length of a football field. Tied down, it swayed even in the slight wind of the airport. As my escorts left, I thought two convicts were approaching me, dressed in dungaree blue jeans and shirts. Then I realized, they weren't convicts, they were sailors. Here in Columbus.

The taller of the two, with a huge black mustache and hair that had to be past regulation length gave me a big shit-eating grin. "Man, I love that expression! Same thing that everybody has, the first time they see the big '49."

I'm trying to figure out the punchline of this particular joke. "It's a blimp."

"No sir! It is a dirigible, fresh from the herrenvolk of Krautland! From the same wonderful folks who brought you the Hindenburg!"

Mustache seems to be having the time of his life. I am distracted by the willowy dark-skinned girl behind him. The way the navy dungarees fit her would distract me enough normally. The fact that she seems to have holstered pistols slung all over her distracts me even more. If it wasn't for the big acid scar on the right side of her face, she'd be a stone fox.

"I am petty officer Khalid, sir, this is Airman Budreau." She's very businesslike. "You are Captain Leonard Sykes?"

"That's me." I pick up my bags. "May Ghu have mercy on my soul."

###

It was peaceful outside, flying over central ohio, the land green and flat as a plate. A lot of overgrown, abandoned farms, but a lot of activity too. This was the year the great plains were swept free of Zack. Now we were back at the western edge of the appalachians and no one living was eager to go into those hills.

Lighter Than Air Craft, Recon (LTAC) 49. That's what they called it. Seventy five meters of helium in mylar bags, held in a semi-rigid titanium alloy frame, driven by three ducted fan rotors. The crew was Navy, just six people. There was Petty Officer Salida Khalid, aka "Six Gun". She didn't talk much. Mustache was also known as Chef, from New Orleans. There was Reyes, young, latino, nervous. He was from some south bronx shithole and I think all the light and the air of the midwest had really put the zap on his head. There was Clean- Chad Van Horn, aka "Mr Clean". Former california adrenaline junkie. You could tell he was just walking through this, that none of it was very real to him. Photographers Mate Third Class Tae Pak, second generation Korean. A weightlifter, he looked like he'd been drop-forged on a 20 ton press. Finally, there was Aviation Chief Petty Officer Vernon Crowder, US Fucking Navy. It might have been my mission, but it was sure as shit the chief's blimp.

"We're a recon bird." Crowder had the helm as we headed west. "Quieter than a plane or chopper. We don't draw Zack in. If we feather the props and drift, we're absolutely silent. We can stay up for two days at a time and we have enough surveillance gear that Pak can damn near tell how many teeth Zack has left in his mouth from two thousand feet. What we are not is air assault. This tub has no armor worthy of the name and only a couple of machine guns for defense. You want us to go into a hot LZ, you find yourself another ride."

"I'm just here for the taxi service. You shouldn't see any action."

"Bull. They told me not to ask where you were going, but one look at you and I can tell it's hot. Play your spec op games and leave my people out of it."

Oh yeah, this was going to be fun.

###

Our destination was Athens, a small city deep in the heart of the southern ohio hills. I could spot the LZ a mile away. Big columns of smoke rose up from burning buildings. The empty shell of the town was burning. As we came closer, I saw helicopters. A couple flew low and slow, playing music, floating among mobs of zombies that came staggering out of the ruins and woods. Most of the choppers were on a big hill outside of town, near a high school, parked on baseball diamonds. A ring of soldiers surrounded them all, firing in all directions. The steady crackle of rifle fire could be heard even over the rotors. We moored ourselves to an old set of monkey bars on a weed grown playground. The '49's crew stayed onboard, watching the show. A fit, shaven-headed older Major in digi-cams met me as I climbed down the Jacob's ladder. He wore a wide-brimmed old cavalry hat complete with gold braid, holding it on with one hand against the propwash. He looked right at me. "Are you Captain Sykes?"

"Yes Sir."

"Outstanding. I'm Major Kilgore. C'mon out, I'll show you around. Pay no attention to me, I'm a crazy old fuck. But you have to see what these men and women have been doing."

One set of my orders said I was from the AG office, doing spot inspections of units. Kilgore wanted to show his off. He led me around, speaking in a voice grown hoarse from shouting over the noise of the choppers. Around us, the top of the hill was a perimeter of men and women in old digi-cams. A few even wore the old BDU cammies. Most had M4's but a lot carried civilian rifles as well, Garands or .308 Springfields or .243 calibers with scopes, popping zombies at the long ranges they train us not to shoot at anymore. Everyone kept banging away at the zombies as they were drawn in by the noise of the choppers. Most were UH-1B's but there were also 5 big CH47 Chinooks and four Aircobras, the sharklike smaller attack choppers that are pretty much useless against Zack. They were shut off, their own pilots firing rifles alongside the ordinary troopies.

"We make sure all our birds come into the LZ low and slow. That brings Zack out after us. Some of our helicopters carry loudspeakers, so we can play music. Really loud music. It draws in Zack. I'm telling you, young captain, Air Cav is the most neglected tool in the toolbox. We use our choppers to bird dog Zack and put our people down right in the middle of red territory, in some defensible piece of ground. We choose where we face Zack. Make him come to us."

"Very impressive, Sir. What about Athens?"

"An empty shell, Captain. It fell in year one and I'm not going to risk the lives of any of my people to save some empty buildings. Burn it and move on."

I looked to one nearby empty house. A work detail was throwing bodies into the old woodframe house, breaking out the windows and throwing in more scrap wood. "What about the houses?"

"Again, abandoned. Pile the bodies in, burn 'em to the ground and shovel dirt over the remains. Best we can do".

I followed him around, playing my role, watching the operation. Kilgore loved his job. There was a glow around him. He'd walk through this all without a scratch. His boys and girls loved him and he loved them. He felt safe with them. He went from man to man on the firing line, giving a few words of encouragement, having a great time. He came to one younger grunt who was going into Z-shock, freaking out. The kid was standing there, crying, his old style M4 rifle locked open on an empty magazine.

"Now son, you can't do that." Kilgore waved back the other members of his squad, a pistol in each hand. "You cannot let Zack get to you that way! Pick up your rifle! Load a fresh magazine. That's an order, son!"

The kid fumbled in an ammo pouch, drawing out a magazine, then dropping it. Kilgore laughed. In that place, with the staggering dead coming closer, he laughed. "Son, I said don't let them freak you out! It's easy!".

Kilgore turned and raised both his pistols, firing aimed, steady shots. Nearby zombies began to drop.

"Simplest thing in the world, son. Just aim and shoot! Kill one more zombie for me son. Pop one more zack, then you can go back to the rest chopper, have a smoke, a coke and a smile. C'mon, one shot!"

Kilgore stood there, empty pistols in each hand as a zombie staggered towards him. He bellowed out a command. "Nobody shoot! Cease fire! If that young private does not fire, I will die! Do not shoot this zombie!"

Kilgore walked slowly towards the soldier, keeping his distance from the shambling corpse following him, but only just. I pulled out both my pistols and took them off safe. Kilgores people were looking on, scared, tired, some of them smiling. The troopie who'd been freaking out was staring in shock at Kilgore.

Kilgore stopped moving and the zombie closed in, it's face turning into a mask of hate and hunger. Kilgore was calm. "Private, we're running out of time. If you don't kill this Zack, he's going to kill me. My life is in your hands."

The kid shook his head and shuddered. He picked up his magazine, everyone watching. He shoved it into his rifle and let the charging handle go forward. Fired.

He missed, the bullet going completely wild. The Zack put one rotted hand on Kilgore's shoulder, it's mouth gaping. Kilgore shrugged, his face serene. "Last chance, son!"

The soldier fired. The bullet took off the top of the zombies' skull, threw it back.

Every soldier in the section cheered. Kilgore holstered his pistols and stepped forward, smiling. He put a hand on the private's shoulder. "Damn good shooting son. Now you can tell people you saved your commander's life. If my sons... If I had a son, I'd want him to be like you. Go back to the rest chopper and take twenty, that's an order."

They were slapping the kid's back like he'd just scored a touchdown in the big game. I holstered my weapons. Kilgore was grinning as he came back towards me, but there was a haunted look in his eyes. I guess I was the only one who wasn't so deep in the insanity that he could see it. "Sir, that was damned stupid. He might just as well have shot you. Or you could have been bitten. What were you thinking?"

Kilgore shrugged, the haunted look not leaving his eyes. I think the close brush with death gave him some need to talk. To explain himself. "Captain Sykes, have you ever heard of the Osaka express?"

Who hadn't? Some well meaning idiot had chartered the ship to evacuate refugees from Capetown when the civil order had collapsed there. There'd been infected on board and the captain hadn't wanted to announce it over the radio for fear he wouldn't be allowed to hit port. He did hit port. As a zombie. Along with six thousand other zombies, in the middle of the night, smack into New York City. By the time the sun came up and anyone knew what was going on, they'd become six hundred thousand, roaming the streets of Manhattan. Not counting the Z's who'd fallen over the side on the way in and were washing up all along the New York/New Jersey waterfront.

Kilgore's face looked much older now. It was suddenly easy to see how much of a front he was putting up. "My wife and sons were in New York when the Osaka Express hit town. I was flying home from Iraq at the time. I still have the last voicemail my wife sent me. So it's really been a long time whether I gave a rat's ass if I lived or died. The only thing I care about now, at all, is winning this war and protecting my people."

He stood up, took a deep breath. Straightened his back, looking out at the burning buildings, the funeral pyres, the lowering sun in the distance. Then he looked back at me with a desperate smile. "Someday this war's gonna end."

**Part 2**

Athens, Ohio was still lighting up the sky as night fell. The newer houses, made mostly of a few pine boards, vinyl siding and chipboard, went up pretty quick. The older houses, built from real wood, turned into really enormous bonfires. Their light reached all the way to the hilltop where Kurtz and his ragtag air cavalry squadron were still killing Zack. As night fell, the first rush from the ruins of the town and suburbs died down, leaving the ground carpetted with zombies the Cav Troopers had put down. A handful of sentries could deal with the few straggling Z's that kept coming in.

They choppered in the steaks and beer and turned the LZ into a cookout. Kilgore broke out a guitar and led an impromptou singalong. It drowned out the moan of the distant Z's, even muting the sound of gunfire. The smell of grilling steaks and spilled beer let me almost forget where we were. I think that was the goal.

Everybody needed shoring up since Chicago. We'd gotten pretty cocky over the summer, sweeping across the Great Plains where we could see Zack coming a mile away. So cocky they'd only sent Third Infantry, New Model Army division, to break the siege of Chicago. 15,000 men. The moat around Chicago was only a million Z's, maybe a million two. Big, but nothing a division couldn't handle.

Only they hadn't factored in the suburbs. They threw up the battle lines and started killing Zack. Suddenly zombies are boiling out of the ruins of Skokie and Gary and every-damned where else, three or four times as many as they expected. Their airfield was overrun before they pulled their heads out of their ass and formed a solid perimeter. Everybody formed square, cooks and clerks and truck drivers with rifles pressed into their hands to fill the line. They piled up the bodies, but Zack still kept coming. Suddenly everyone was getting deja vu of the bad old days when Zack was everywhere and it didn't matter how many you killed, there were always too many.

The old Major was standing by me, grinning, with a can of beer and a steak on an army mess tray. "Here you go, young Captain. One Delmonico, well done. Hope that's the way you like it. I used to like mine rare but after I saw my first Z, red and bloody kills my appetite."

"Thank you Sir." I took it, started cutting the steak. Someone had actually dug up some seasoned salt. The potato was rehydrated, but I wasn't complaining. I'd come to like my steak well-done too. "Sir, were you at Chicago?"

Kilgore's face glowed with memory. "They called us in on day four. We formed a blocking force outside of Skokie, to draw off Zack from the main force. We had the best seat in the house, right outside the main perimeter. We saw the Air Force come in and lay down every damn canister of napalm they had. They saved the Army's ass that day. First time they used the thermite cluster bombs too. That shit actually made Zack burn, walk around like burning torches, burning like a grease fire. Hell of a smell. I liked the napalm better. It was cleaner. That smell, that gasoline smell, it smelled like..." He shrugged, grinning. "It smelled like victory."

"Major, I haven't been honest with you. I have some special orders."

I dug out a copy of my special authorizations and gave them to him. As he read, I started cutting the steak up fast. No telling when I'd have steak again.

###

Big Hilltop Resort and Casino had opened a few years before the war. Just off the Ohio River, a dam created a lake for water sports and a water park, while the resort itself sponsored a large casino. Unfortunately for the investors, it was built on strip mined land, which meant that shortly after it was built, the lake turned into a poisoned, acidic mess. Then the dead started rising from their graves to devour the living and the casino business went to hell. When the dust settled, former Senator Anson Williams, one of the investors, had turned it into a hi-tech fortress, catering to the wealthy survivors of various blue zones scattered through the mountains. Now, however, there was no Gambling Commission or, for that matter any other law enforcement, to require him to follow any rules he didn't want to follow. So it had been for the last three years. It was about to change.

"The best lead we have to find Kurtz is a former subordinate of his, Charles Taylor. Taylor worked for Walderberg, then left it just before their complex was destroyed. For the last few months, he's been working for Big Hilltop. You're familiar with Senator Williams?"

Kilgore grinned. "He runs that place now, doesn't he? We've been ordered to steer clear of them. Word is, they're negotiating with the federal government."

I'd been briefed. "He wants the federal government to appoint him administrator of these territories during the recovery. He's about to be disappointed. I'm authorized to demand Taylor. If he doesn't hand Taylor over to us immediately, I'm instructed to place him under arrest. If he or his troops resist, that's where your air cav comes in."

Kilgore was practically salivating. "What are the rules of engagement?"

"Once the shooting starts, there are no rules of engagement."

"Williams won't believe that." Kilgore was smiling. "I met him a couple of months ago, when I flew in there on leave. It was pretty wild. Williams seems to believe his Washington connections will protect him against anything."

"You're happy about this."

"I lost two months pay there, Captain. I consider this payback. Besides, the water park is still working. I love waterslides."

"That's in the middle of a serious red zone, Sir. Heavy Zack presence in the surrounding areas."

"Son, Zack don't waterslide!"

###

Kilgore was making preps before the last steaks had been eaten. The big chinooks were sent for more fuel and equipment, while he went to work briefing the cobra pilots. I finished my steak, climbed back into the blimp and got ready to sleep.

Chief Crowder and his crew were in the middle of some operation when I asked "Chief, where can I sleep?"

"The crew compartment is aft. Spare hammocks are against the bulkhead. Soon as we're done here, Chef can hook you up." He never took his eyes off the controls. Neither did the rest of the crew.

There was a bump and a definite dropping feeling. "What's going on? Are we losing pressure?"

"We are decreasing bouyancy for our mooring." Khalid- "Six Gun"- was similarly distracted. "When we moor, we recompress the helium so we are less buoyant, but we have to pump an equivalent amount of oxygen into the gasbags to keep them inflated."

The last person I'd heard with an accent like that was my iraqi guide in Mosul. He'd tried to kill me. It made me nervous. "So what does Allah say about lighter than air craft?"

"I would not know, Sir, I am Chaldean. Iraqi christian. This is the price I paid for that." She pointed to the acid stain on her face. Her voice was numb, cold, detached. Her eyes were totally focussed on the controls. "My world came to an end long before the dead rose."

She hit the valves, shutting off the pumps. "Chief, we have 1000 pounds positive weight."

Chef put his hand on my shoulder. "C'mon Sir."

The aft compartment was thin fiberboard walls and metal stanchions for hooking hammocks to the frame. Chef spoke in a low voice. "You're lucky she was distracted, Sir. Normally she gets pissed if someone calls her a moslem. Some moslem dude did that to her face. She wouldn't marry him and it was some kind of honor thing. How you get your honor back by throwing acid in a girl's face, hell, that's beyond me. You ever sleep in a hammock?"

"No. This is all you've got?"

"No spare weight for racks. Or bulkheads, for that matter. Most of us have to use these to sleep." He gave me some earplugs. Then he showed me how to sling a hammock.

###

It's funny. Back in Columbus, it had taken a fifth of bourbon to get me to sleep. Here, in a hammock that swayed each time the wind hit the gasbag, with a couple of styrofoam marshmallows kinda sorta cutting back on the noise of choppers and rifles and distant zombies, here I slept like a log.

I woke to the sound of dozens of helicopter engines turning over and the sun in my face like lasers, burning a hole in my brain. I got out of the hammock the way most people get out of a hammock for the first time- by dumping myself on the floor.

Excuse me. This was the Navy. I dumped myself on the deck. It felt a lot like a floor.

They'd already eaten and were prepping the blimp for takeoff. Sometime between my third and fourth cups of coffee, Reyes told me they'd left me a meal in the cooler. Crowder had ordered them to let me sleep. I didn't think it was out of the goodness of his heart. He just wanted to forget I was on his blimp.

I felt almost human after my first pot of coffee. I watched Kilgore's people get ready to go to war. The chinooks had brought back rocket pods, minigun pods, door guns and a couple of big black rubber fuel blivets that everyone was sucking fuel out of. They all seemed excited at the idea of doing something besides killing Zack.

Photographer's Mate Pak handed me a microphone while he sat at his console. "Sir, you have secure communications with Kilgore's bird so long as we're line of sight." Pak was checking his controls and monitors. There were a lot to check.

"Do you have facial recognition software?"

"Yes Sir. I already googled a pic of Taylor off of Facebook. All the monitors will be looking for him."

That was when I heard the bugler. A real, no-kidding bugler, in old style cavalry hat and scarf, blowing on a trumpet. This just got wierder and wierder. The choppers vaulted into the sky, leaving behind the burned remains of what had once been a city. As we lifted off smoothly, I looked back at the smoking pits where houses had been turned into improvised crematoriums and basements were now mass graves.

Flying in the blimp was surreal, floating above the hills. At top speed, the blimp could just keep up with the choppers at cruising speed. We floated like a whale surrounded by pilot fish. Below, the forests seemed to be reclaiming southern ohio. We came to the Ohio river as the sun was sparkling off it, winding between the hills. Boats and barges were going back and forth. With the railroads collapsing and the roads clogged by masses of wrecks and zack, rivers had become vital for transport.

Pak had all the cameras on Big Hilltop as soon as we came in view. The huge hotel/casino was a mass of faux stone and real glass. All of it was tinged gold, so it gleamed in the sun like a monument to greed. The waterpark was off to one side. So was an airstrip, all surrounded by an eight foot fence. From the intel, it was topped with barbed wire and could be electrified if needed. A quartet of big windmills turned to one side, apparently their main source of electricity. I studied the pictures as we closed for a flyby, with Kilgore doing color commentary in my ear.

"They don't have much heavy firepower. A lot of civilian weaponry, small arms, some explosives. A couple of fifty cals. Those things are bad for choppers, Captain. If shooting starts, those things will be the first to go."

I thought I'd seen everything. But what I saw in the cameras shook me, in ways I thought I couldn't be touched by anymore. "Kilgore, what is that outside the fence?"

"That's William's own private moat. Rumor was, high rollers who couldn't pay their bills wound up outside the fence, working it off."

There were hundreds of zombies outside the fence. Old and new, young and old, decaying corpses and some that looked obscenely fresh.

"Is he insane?"

"Oh, they're better guard dogs than rottweilers and he doesn't have to feed them." Kilgore seemed to be enjoying my shock. "It'd be bad news for him if the fence gave way though."

The choppers split, some flying on each side of the casino as our blimp approached. There were half a dozen figures on the roof of the main casino, waiting. Through the monitors, I couldn't see Taylor, but Williams was up there, toasting us with champagne.

"Sir, I think I found Taylor." Pak sounded nervous. "Facial recognition spotted him."

"Good. Let's pick him up."

"He's outside the fence, sir. He's dead."

I looked at the monitor. It was Taylor all right, wearing a very nice set of silk pajamas. Well, nice except for the blood stain on his chest. His body intact, he was milling among a crowd of zombies outside the main gate.

"Captain." Kilgore's voice in my ear. "I just got a priority message from Fifth Army Corps Intelligence. Our target here has just been given a code Zulu Alfa. Zulu Alfa protocols are in effect. Do you copy?"

Zulu Alfa? Code for the zombie virus going airborne. Our worst nightmare. The protocol called for extermination of every living thing in the area, no contact of any kind permitted, no prisoners, of any age or gender. Then mass incineration.

"Sir, have you double checked that? What's the source of their intel?"

"That's above my pay grade, captain. Our mission profile has just altered. I did a double check on it, just to let you know. The Arclight mission is 45 minutes out."

Arclight. High altitude bombing with incendiaries, a mixture of napalm and white phosphorous. The goal would be to sterilize the entire area, before the virus could spread. It would also destroy any possible intel or evidence I might pick up here.

I turned to Pak. "Can you put me through to Fifth Corps?"

"Already on it, Sir." Pak actually seemed to be enjoying his work. His hands flew over the controls. The deck tilted as Crowder took us away from the target. Through one of Pak's screens, I could see Anson Williams. The former senator, in a garish hawaian shirt, was toasting us with a glass of something.

I could tell the minute they got the word this wasn't a social call. Williams was a big man and he plowed through his guests like a polar bear going after a baby seal.

Outside, I heard the helicopters throw their engines into full power. Then- violins? An orchestra? The strains of an orchestra, coming from huge loudspeakers under several choppers.

It was the ride of the Valkyries, orchestral terror and death blaring out of the loudspeakers, relayed from some CD player as they swooped down on the casino.

All order vanished as the choppers opened fire, tracers licking across the golden windows, shattering them into blackness. Rockets exploded along the fenceline, more rockets blasting the gun platforms on the hotel.

William's boys returned fire with everything they had, including at least two stinger missles, hellishly fast darts that smacked into two of the choppers. One of the Cobras exploded in midair as the Stinger set off it's rockets and ammo.

The strains of Wagner played on over it all, orchestral pain and fear and glory washing out.

I could hear Kilgore passing orders on to his pilots. He'd apparently forgotten he still had a line to me.

"Alfa troop, get that gate! No one gets out! He'll be making a run for it any minute now. Bravo, good shooting on that fifty-cal, owe you a case of beer for that one. SAR chopper, you stay back. You're supposed to rescue anyone who goes down, not get shot down yourself! More rockets on the fences! I want them getting overrun with zack, it'll keep them from shooting at us until the Arclight comes in."

How the hell would Fifth Corps have any idea whether the virus was going airborne here? "Pak, can you put me on the horn to Fifth Corps? Priority call, Col. Tregaskis."

"He's a damned photographers mate, not a radioman, Sir!" Crowder spared me a moment looking back from the pilots' seat.

"It's okay Chief, I can do this! I know a guy in Five Corps commo." Pak seemed excited to be doing something different. He hit controls. "Okay, I'm patched through the satellite feed, gonna have to use internet phone. That okay Sir?"

I nodded as I listened in on Kilgore's chatter.

"There they go! Main gate! Alfa troop, do not let anyone by!"

I saw what happened at the main gate. The big chain link gates opened. A swarm of zombies tried to pour in, only to be thrown back as a huge dump truck with a dozer blade on front charged out. The thing barely slowed as it plowed through the mob, bodies and parts of bodies flying everywhere. Close behind came other trucks and a couple of busses, men on top shooting into the swarming Z's. Williams had obviously put a lot of thought into his last ditch escape plan.

But he hadn't planned on Kilgore. The Alfa-Zulu protocol was that no one got out alive. Everyone in the area was assumed to be infected and contagious. If an airborne version of the Z-virus got out, that would be pretty much all she wrote for what was left of the human race.

The lead truck caught half a dozen rockets, the explosions tearing it apart. The flaming wreckage careened into the roadside ditch. The following vehicles began losing tires as the choppers strafed them. One burst from a minigun damn near cut a bus in half.

"Okay, sir, I've got it." Pak was on the phone, looking at a screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. "Authorization was from National Command Authority Two-Seven Kilo. It came into Corps HQ about fifteen minutes ago over secure satellite internet. It had all the codes."

"What the hell is NCA two-seven-kilo? I don't know that. Give me a source."

Pak kept speaking, talking to his buddy at Corps. "You heard the man, check the- Okay, that's the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, primary agent." He looked like he'd just won a prize.

"We lost CDC Atlanta two years ago. How the hell are they sending Zulu-Alfas?"

On the screen, the broken remains of the road convoy were being swarmed by zac, until the vehicles looked like heaps of writhing bodies. A few knots of William's people were still firing, at Zac or at the choppers. Apparently, they'd figured out that nobody was getting out alive and they wanted to take some of us with them. Kilgore's men were returning fire.

"Sir, he says the code came in fifteen minutes ago. My guess is that no one ever cleaned the old CDC authorizations out of the system! Towards the end there, they were big mojo with DC, foriegn governments, everybody."

"And Kurtz was liason. Damnit! Get on the horn to Corps, tell them to lift the Zulu-Alfa." I spoke into the phone. "Major Kilgore! This is Captain Sykes! The Zulu-Alfa is invalid! Check with Corps again!"

"Captain, I'm in the middle of a battle here! I have already checked this!"

"Check one more time, Sir! You are killing innocent civilians!"

This time, Kilgore cut me off. The sudden silence was illusory- There was still a battle going on, still the choppers flying by, other radio feeds- but without the noise of Kilgores' command bird piped right into my ear, it seemed almost peaceful. It also seemed eternal. Minutes seemed like hours as the shooting went on. Then Kilgore's voice came over every channel in the clear. "Checkfire! Checkfire! All Red Horse units, checkfire! Zulu Alfa has been revoked! Cease engaging civilians unless fired upon! Engage Zac at will, commence rescue ops!"

The gunfire stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. Apparently, Williams people had their hands full with their former customers and were willing to let bygones be bygones. Or they were all dead.

I turned to Crowder. "Chief, we need to land, see if we can pick up any intel. That place is my only link to Kurtz."

"Sir, I told you we don't do hot LZ's. My orders on that supersede anything you have."

"It's no longer a hot LZ. William's people have stopped shooting."

Crowder grimaced, but I had him. He turned to his crew. "Six-gun, Clean, you have landing party detail with Captain Sykes. You'll go down on the Zip lines in full CC suits and ammo issue. Chef, you're about the same size as Captain Sykes. Loan him your CC suit."

Six-gun was impassive, Clean was excited. But not as excited as Chef. He broke the suit out grinning. "Here you go, Sir."

"Thanks for the loan. I'll try not to damage it."

"Hell, tear this bastard up. If it gets ripped up, I can't do any landing parties."

Navy Close-Combat suits were developed for boarding parties at sea, where spaces were confined and getting jumped by Zac as you searched the boat was pretty much a given. Someone finally figured out that almost all zombie bites are on the limbs or neck. Basically, they were coveralls with sheet metal pop-rivetted to the cloth on the arms and legs. About the thickness of a tin can, the armor was useless against real weapons, but impossible for a Z to bite through. Chainmail gauntlets with some sheet metal overlaying them went on the hands. What looked like a sheet metal neck brace went on the shoulders and neck to protect against bites. The chest and body were unarmored, since human/zombie jaws can't stretch wide enough to bite them but thick canvas prevented scratches. A standard riot helmet with face mask completed the ensemble. It was dark blue and for recognition in the dark, long strips of reflective tape outlined arms, legs and body.

I looked like an extra from "Tron".

Until we started strapping on the guns, of course. I favor a standard M4 with a 100-round drum magazine. I hate having to reload. Clean carried a Mossberg 12 gauge with a fixed bayonet, which showed that somewhere under that California breeziness were a few working brain cells. "Six-gun" Khalid, true to her name, carried six guns. Four were high capacity pistols on strategically placed holsters. Two were Mini-Uzis, compact versions of the Israeli SMG. Both Uzi's hung from a shoulder harness and were loaded with standard 32-round magazines.

"Hey, guys, I spotted Williams! Senator Williams is alive!" Pak was almost shouting with excitement. I went over to the monitors. Sure enough, Williams and a couple of his bodyguards were on the screen.

'Where are they?"

"East side of the fence. Looks like he sent the vehicles out through the front gate to draw our attention while he slipped out the back."

I thought of the vehicles charging out the gate, first stopped by the gunships, then their passengers torn limb from limb by the zombies. "Nice guy. He might have information we need. Let's get him."

We swooped in over the wrecked casino and waterpark. The main building was a blazing wreck by now. Apparently, Williams hadn't believed in silly things like fire codes. Kilgore's attack had blown a dozen gaps in the fence and zack was coming through in bunches, wandering around and chasing the survivors. I swear, I saw one fall into the water slide and ride the thing down. Adding to the chaos, the choppers were coming in to rescue the living. Some landed and tried to set up perimeters, others lowered rope ladders. The chopper crews seemed pretty experienced at rescue procedures but even they weren't fast enough all the time. I saw one Huey tilted, a casino worker hanging onto the rope ladder it was dangling while two zombies chewed on his legs. The crew of the chopper cut the rope before it crashed, sending all three forms tumbling to the ground below.

Williams and his guards had ducked into a pump house, a mob of Zack on their heels. The last guard wasn't fast enough. As we swooped closer, I could see the door pulled open, the guard swarmed by writhing bodies.

Then we lurched to a stop. Chief Crowder was playing the controls like a virtuoso pianist when he called out. "This is as far as we go! I'm dropping y'all on the roof. You three go down by the zip lines. The winches can bring up two people per line, so each of you choose a dance partner. Hook up!"

Each CC suit also included a lift harness and a strap on the back for a skyhook. We each hooked up, testing each other's rigs. The winches were located at either side of the gondola, so we split, stood in the doors with the wind blast of the fans going by us and leapt out.

It was simpler than rapelling, kind of like australian rapelling on steroids. Looking down as the roof rushed up at me. We landed amid various vent pipes, smacked the quick release switches and looked for the access hatch.

I found it first. Went down first. The room was dark, the pumps silent. Probably stopped by the attack. There was a smell of burning circuitry and a door in front of me. Shuffling movement on the other side of the door.

Six Gun landed behind me and checked out the door. "It opens outward. Zombies always pull doors open."

"Yeah. I've always wondered about that. Why don't they ever accidentally throw themselves against the door and close it?"

I couldn't read the expression on her face through the CC mask. She just stepped back and aimed. "Unlatch the door. Be prepared for a rush."

Clean kneeled beside her. "I'll take the short ones. Do it, man!"

I flipped the door switch and stepped back.

Two zombies, older ones, threw the door open. Six Gun nailed each with a single shot. Then a shorter zombie came around the corner, right into the barrel of Clean's shotgun. I never even got a good look at the thing. Everything above the chest vanished in a shotgun blast.

"Yeah!" Clean gave out an exultant noise. "I hate those kid zombies, man. Each time I've almost been killed, it's been one of those fuckin' knee biters."

Down the hall we heard more guns going off. I pulled my mask off so I could be heard farther away. "Senator Williams? We're here to rescue you!"

"Rescue me? Is that why the gunships blew the hell out of my casino?"

"Senator, we are the only game in town. You can stay here or come to us!"

"We're coming in! Don't shoot!"

Down the hall, a door was thrown open. William's last guard was the first out, his only weapon a big .44 magnum. Intimidating for the living, not the kind of gun you want to face a mob of Zack with. The Senator was right behind him.

They all stopped when two zombies lunged out of side door, grappling with the bodyguard. He twisted the big revolver in his hand, fired once. Blew the lower spine out of one of the zombies. Then the barrel under the chin and another shot. That killed one, but the other zombie was on his back, pinning his arms, trying for a neck bite. Behind him, Williams was backing away, back down another hallway.

Anyone who's fought Zack learns to hate hallways, closed spaces, tunnels. Closed spaces are where Zack pins you. Where he gets you. None of us wanted to go into the hallway.

Six-gun went in, lunging. Shoved her wrist into the biting mouth of the Z. Shoved it's head back as diseased teeth closed on her metal sleeve, trying to bite through. It let go of the bodyguard, grabbing her arms, trying to bite deeper, growling with frustration. Then Six-gun shoved it back against the wall, put the barrel of the Uzi against it's head and pulled the trigger.

The bodyguard looked back as the boss who'd abandoned him, then looked at us. "Screw him. Where do I go?"

Clean took him as I ran past Six-gun. I couldn't see him when I went around a corner, but I heard his cry from a storage room. "Go back! I got rid of you!"

I followed the voice into the room. He was facing a zombie. A young one, a girl, couldn't have been more than twelve. Fresh, recently dead, not a mark on her except for a strip of abraded skin around her discolored throat. Dressed in the kind of underwear you see in a Fredericks of Hollywood catalogue.

The sight of her seemed to paralyze Williams. With her between us, there was no room for me to shoot without hitting him as well. She lunged at him. He put out one hand to stop her. She grabbed the arm, the hand, bit deeply, her eyes wide. She pulled her head away leaving the stumps of three fingers on his hand, blood gouting.

It was a clear shot. I fired. The 5.56 round took off most of her skull.

He slumped against the wall,looking at her body. I grabbed his hand, pulled a field tourniquet from my belt. The torn stumps of his fingers sprayed blood, bright arterial red.

He didn't resist. I put on the tourniquet. Reflex. Pointless reflex. Once a Z bites you, that's all she wrote.

His face went vacant. Shock setting in. He looked at me and spoke, tonelessly. It was by rote, some speech he'd practiced for a long time. "I have no idea where those girls came from. They wander up to the fences from miles away. We help the ones we can, give jobs to them, but these accusations of sexual slavery are...are..."

"Yes, Senator. But right now, I'm looking for Walter Kurtz. Or Charles Taylor. What can you tell me about them?"

"Kurtz?" His eyes focussed, a different expression in them now. Purpose. "We were going to save the world. Kurtz knew. Taylor, he knew, but he said the work wasn't finished. That we'd become, what we, what we..."

"You knew Colonel Kurtz?"

"Yes. We were going to save the world. Don't you see? No one saw. We were beyond them. Beyond morality. We needed to..." He suddenly began to sob. "We didn't mean to make them monsters. The children. That girl. All of them, I never thought the children..."

"Senator, there's not much time. I need you to focus!"

He focussed. His attention suddenly became razor sharp. As his unwounded hand went to my pistol belt. He grabbed my pistol in one smooth movement, raising it to his head with his unwounded hand. He looked at me, his face aghast with sudden realization. His voice was a whisper. "The real monsters are the living."

He pulled the trigger.

**Part 3 -The Pitts**

The gunshot was still echoing off the concrete walls of the pumphouse when I heard the moaning. I knew what it was. And Zack wasn't here for R&R. Zack's idea of R&R was my guts on a plate. I had to go.

I lifted Williams off the ground, grunting with the weight, trying not to think about what was pouring from the shattered ruin that had been his skull. Dripping onto me as I carried him up to the hatch in the roof. Sunlight was beaming down, outlining Salida- "Six Gun" - like a waiting angel of death. She aimed past me with her weapons, ready to nail the first Zack that came after me. Her eyes were tracking like gunsights.

"Why do you have him? He is dead."

"Intel. I don't have time to check the body. Clean!"

Chad van Horn, "Clean", looked down, his face indistinct in the sunlight. "Hey man. Why'd you kill that dude?"

"Pass down the cable, I can't lift this guy up the ladder."  
>"Whatever, dude." He passed down the recovery cable.<p>

It was twisting in my hand, still suspended from the dirigible that had dropped us off, now hovering above us. I hooked it to the harness of my CC suit, shouted up to Clean. "Signal the chief to pull us up, slowly."

Two guns went off inches from my head. Salida Khalid, "Six Gun" gave the first Z following me a double tap, almost rupturing my eardrum in the process. Then the cable yanked at my harness and I was too busy hanging onto William's body. The former senator had been eating well, it seemed. Having a good time right up until he blew his own brains out.

Out in the sun, the cable suddenly went tight and I shot up towards the blimp with my cargo. LTAC 49 was stenciled on it's sides in letters ten feet tall along with it's call sign and nickname- "Streetgang". That stuck in my head as we swayed on the cable, Airman Reyes waiting by the boom, grabbing Anson and pulling both of us in. Then something wet dripped on his hand from the dead man's head and he jumped back, cursing in spanish. I missed a lot of it, swinging myself in when Reyes jumped back, unhooking William's body and searching it.

A money belt. A thick wad of new dollars, another of swiss francs, some bars of gold the size and shape of small candy bars. A notebook, filled with numbered lists. Probably numbered accounts. I put that away for later.

I dimly sensed Six Gun and Clean both coming up, felt the deck of the blimp tilt as we started rising away from the ruins of what had been William's little kingdom. Then I noticed Chief Crowder watching me. "Why'd you kill him?"

"He killed himself. He was face to face with a zombie and he freaked. I'm looking for intel. What did you do with his bodyguard?"

"He's secured. Funny, Williams freaking out at a Z after all these years."

"That Z had been a girl, barely out of puberty, dressed in a garter belt and stockings. Strangled. There's no good story behind something like that."

I'm done. I shove his body out over the cabin door. Leaving the world no poorer, he vanishes into the trees below.

"What's Kilgore saying?"

Crowder laughs at that. "The Arclight mission was canceled. His boys have set up a perimeter around the water park. Look."

We're banking past the water park that was part of Big Mountain Resort and Casino, now out of business. The casino is a burning wreck, smoke pouring out. The water park is untouched. Kilgore's air cav are landing on the nearby airstrip. I glimpse one of his people going down the waterslide.

"All right!" Clean is leaning out, cheering them. "Chief, let's go back, check it out!"

"Get back in uniform, Clean, and put that friggly CC suit away. All those suits get sterilized! You not in the Army, you in the Navy! Remember that!"

I walk past Crowder reasserting his control and step into the sleeping quarters. The big guy we pulled out of the wrecked casino is sitting there, zip ties on his wrists. Crowder apparently doesn't trust him. Good for Crowder.

The bodyguard doesn't look happy. "I'm Captain Leonard Sykes, US Army. Who are you?"

"Louis Morelli, pleased to meet you. Is there any reason you got me tied up?"

"What's your connection with Senator Williams?"

"I was security for Big Mountain Resort. Ever since things went to hell. Just security."

"Why were you with Williams just now?"

"He came running off the roof just before you guys attacked, told me and Dan Pastore to follow him. You saw what happened after that."

"Have you ever heard of Colonel Walter Kurtz? Or Charles Taylor?"

"Naw, I'm just a guard."

I slap him across the face with my .45. Not too hard, just enough to show I mean business. He'll have a bruise, but he won't lose any teeth. He yelps, more from surprise then pain, begins to protest. Then I press the barrel of the pistol into his forehead, hard enough to hurt. He shuts up.

"Morelli, there is nothing underneath us but Zack. Lie to me again and you go out the door and zack strips the meat from your bones." I calm myself. Focus. "Now, have you heard of Charles Taylor or Colonel Walter Kurtz?'

"Okay! Okay, yeah, I seen them. They were with the Walderberg group guys. Them and Williams were buddies around the casino. Used to be, some of those Walderberg guys would fly in every couple of weeks, blowing off steam, I guess. Taylor was, like, the go-between, the fixer. Kurtz was with them too, but he never, you know, got anything. Not even at the start, before it got crazy."

"Tell me more."

"When this all started, Big Mountain was, like, a clearing house for the Think Tank. That's what the Walderberg guys called their place. They'd come in to blow off steam, meet government reps, talk with scientists, all that. Williams, when it started, he said we were laying the foundation for a new world. Big talk for a guy running a casino, right? Even when things went to hell and the government pulled out. Except, once it was just them, things started to get strange. I was just a guard, y'know, but I heard stuff. Weird stuff. Like when CDC went down, a bunch of them came in for a conference, but they sure seemed like they were celebrating. That's when they started ordering in the really sick, kinky stuff. Perverted stuff, you know? For them and their buddies. It was almost like, I don't know, like they were trying to see how bad they could get."

"Just for them?"

"Mostly for their buddies at first. Guys from the government or the army, big shots. Williams called them his party favors. But then the guys from the think tank started dipping in too. Drugs, girls, boys, anything they wanted. Willing or unwilling. Word was that Williams had some of the rooms wired so he could blackmail people but I never saw those."

"You just pimped for them."

"No! I was just a guard at the doors, y'know? Beat doin' the old shamble and moan. Taylor was the guy doing the pimp daddy thing. Working for Williams."

"What about Kurtz?".

"Kurtz never did any of that. Acted like he was too good for that stuff, even when he was with the groups. Right up till the think tank blew up. Word was, some guys were saying..." Morelli's voice went low, as if someone might hear. "Word was that Kurtz did it. He blew up the think tank."

I shook my head. "Barracks B.S. Rumors like that always go around. The biomass plant that powered the complex blew up and the explosion drew in a chain swarm attack while the defenses were down."

"Except there were no zombies around to be drawn in. I went there a couple of times, as window dressing for Williams. You know, big man, got his bodyguards, all that. There were no Z's on the fence. None at all. Hell, they left the gate open. The only Z's I ever saw there were a couple dozen they had in holding pens, for research. It's back in the hills, man, there ain't nobody around to be a zombie. Except the video showed that place crawling with them. Hell, the day it went up, half the Z's in our moat went off to the Think Tank, and it's twenty miles away. It was creepy, man. Like somebody blew a whistle."

"What did Williams think of it?"

"He was relieved, man. It was like somebody had offed his loan shark or something. Funny, since those guys were most of his business. He and Taylor were both happy, until Kurtz showed up. They tried to keep it secret, but everybody knew. Taylor was, like, Kurtz' fence, selling stuff to get Kurtz ammo, gear, food, that kind of stuff. Williams was trying to cut a deal with the Feds on something, behind Kurtz's back. But after all the stuff he'd done, the hookers and the drugs and illegal stuff, Williams needed to get rid of the evidence. He needed someone to blame it on too. Taylor got to be the patsy."

"And the girl who cornered Williams? The girl zombie? Williams knew who she was, didn't he?"

Morelli doesn't say a word.

I jam the pistol barrel into his forehead. "Didn't he?"

"I don't know nothin' man!" He was almost crying now, struggling in the zip ties, eyes closed. "I was just a guard, man! I don't know anything!"

"Well if you don't know anything, we might as well chuck you out the door and give Zack a free meal."

I grab his collar, opening the nearest exit door. It slides open, the air blowing in, nothing but blue sky beyond.

"No! Wait! I know a guy that Taylor found, he was going to give him to Kurtz. Some guy that Kurtz wanted dead, real bad! He knows something about Kurtz!"

"What's his name? Give me a name and a location or get ready to learn how to fly!"

"Reimer! Dave Reimer! He's hiding out at the Pitts! He was one of Kurtz' people at the think tank! He has something Kurtz wants, really bad!"

I shut the door.

Crowder is looking at me from the door. Looking at me like he thinks I'm insane. He could be right.

"Chief, file a flight plan for the Pitts."

Crowder snorts and shakes his head. "Figures. This mission gets better and better."

###

I help Clean and Six-gun sterilize the CC suits, then we check each other for bites and tears. People will get bitten and cut in combat, infected, not even noticing it in the rush of the fight. Then they die in the middle of the night and you have Zack in the bunk next to yours, while you're asleep. It turns out Clean and Reyes were watching my interrogation. I have street creds with them now. Whoopee.

After that, as we head to the Pitts, I study Kurtz' files, trying to figure out what made this guy tick.

I couldn't believe they wanted this guy dead. He was perfect. Connected. Military family, married the right wife, went to the right schools. He was a sure bet for General, two stars, three stars, War College, Joint Chiefs of Staff, anything. He chucked it all to go to work for Walderberg. He had to have known he was throwing away his career.

"Man on foot, portside!" Reyes had port lookout. "Some hillbilly with a crossbow I think. He's waving."

Crowder checks the instruments. "Bring her around. We'll pick him up. Clean, hook up to a jump line, get ready to pull him in. Reyes, get the tranq gun if he gets twitchy."

I shove the papers into my briefcase. "Let's skip this guy. He's survived in these hills for four years without us, he'll be fine."

"Orders are to pick up any uninfected human we find in the red zones, sir." Crowder grins. His orders supersede me.

"Why does he carry a crossbow?" Salida spares a glance at the cameras.

Chef is checking the power controls for the zip line as he talks. "A lot of people in the Red Zones use them. They're silent. My dad used to hunt deer with those things."

"He's rabbiting!" Pak at his console is working the cameras. "I got him, he's heading for the brush line!"

"I got him." The ducted fans roar to full power, an odd sound but so loud we have to shout over them suddenly, while the blimp shakes. Reyes takes aim with the tranq gun, leaning out the window. He fires. "Got him!"

"Let's hurry guys." Pak's voice just changed. "I'm picking up zack closing in, multiple readings on the motion sensors."

Six Gun calls back, her voice icewater calm. "We are coming up on him. Clean, on my mark- go!"  
>Clean throws himself out the door, the jump line screaming as he drops. The rope creaks and groans, then the winch starts pulling him back in. On the radio, I hear "Missed him! He jinked left. That tranq is slowing him down though."<p>

"Get him quick!" Pak is almost shouting. "Zack is all over the place!"

"I got him- oh fuck!" Reyes hits the override on the jump line and the motor screams as it reels them in. I lean out to see.

A zombie is clinging to our civilians leg, her head seeming to bob as the civilian gives out a weak scream. Then the zombie lets go, tumbling into the woods below. We reel in Clean, gripping the civilian. The civilian is young, unconscious now, his leg a bloody mess. Clean pushes him away frantically, flying back away from the splashed blood. There's a lot of blood coming off the torn pants leg, probably a nicked artery, almost spraying blood.

"Nice going, Chief. He's been bitten. He's infected."

Crowder shakes his head. "That might be a scratch, not a bite. Six-gun, where's the nearest field hospital?"

The Chief is in full denial mode. I give a quick glance to the crew. They aren't going to defy him. Crowder speaks with emphasis, as if he can make it true by saying it strongly enough.

Too bad. I'm not here to deal with the Chief's mistakes. My concern is with much bigger mistakes.

"He is infected. Even if it's just a scratch, those thing's nails are septic as hell. You know this, dammit. You screwed up! Let's move on!"

"We're gonna take him to a field hospital! They could still save him!"

I shoot our civilian in the head. Shove him out the door. Close the door.

They look at me in horror.

"I told you not to stop. Let me know when we're closing on the Pitts."

###

It used to be Pittsburgh. It had been Pittsburgh until a week after the fall of New York. The dust hadn't settled from the disaster at Yonkers when some genius of a sports promoter sold the idea that an exhibition football game at Pittsburgh would be just the thing to distract people. Genius. The walking dead popping up all over the country, our biggest city the home for four million flesh eating ghouls, the US Army just shot itself in the foot on national television (and Webcast), and a football game is going to make people feel all better.

That's football fans for you.

55,000 fans crowded into Pittsburgh Stadium, not a capacity crowd, but it looked pretty big on TV. They were there to watch the Denver Broncos and the Pittsburgh Steelers battle each other to prove, well, who could win a football game.

Fast forward to third quarter, Denver ahead by one point. While this has been going on, there's been a massive chemical accident at a refinery nearby. The story was that Z's overran the control room. However it happened, the oil refinery began exploding and a cloud of toxic gas drifted out of the disaster, over the suburbs and right onto Pittsburgh stadium.

A lot of accidents like that happened around then.  
>55,000 fans turned into 55,000 screaming, panicking people, jamming the exits, trampling each other. Some poor bastards threw themselves off the high walls of the stadium rather than choking to death on the poison gas.<p>

There must have been some infected in the crowd, because by the time emergency services got to the stadium, the bodies were starting to rise again. Lost in the smoke and fumes, most of the Pittsburgh fire and ambulance services died right there as a wave of zombies spread out. That was where the term "Pittburger" came in- zombies among multiple dead bodies who would take one or two bites, then go on to the next body. Behavioralists are still trying to figure out that one. It meant that the Pittsburgh Z's were mostly intact. The last broadcasts out of the city ended two days later, ripping the heart out of central Pennsylvania.

A year later, the high command decided we needed an air base to function as a bridge, somewhere in the eastern red zone. They wanted an airfield on defensible terrain, not surrounded by open fields that zack could swarm over. Pittsburgh International fit the bill, surrounded by hills and deep vales even between the individual landing strips. The Rangers dropped January First and by March, when Zack began to defrost, there was an established perimeter, forts made out of stacked connex boxes and a working airbase. It had been a good start.

It was what happened over the next two years that earned it the name "The Pitts". The ruins harbored an incredible number of zombies, but was too hard to reach for a single mass attack. Instead, there was a constant chinese water torture form of attack, a steady trickle of Z's probing the defenses, never allowing any rest. Then the Army began using the Pitts as a punishment detail, a dumping ground for various hardcases and knuckleheads. Criminals, deserters, thieves all found themselves thrown off the transport choppers and left at this place. Some of them began establishing hookups with the transport flights constantly using the airport. Soon, it was the central distribution point of the eastern US for black market drugs, stolen loot, what have you. Repeated attempts to clean it up later, the Army tried to forget this place existed.

Night was falling as we neared the Pitts. The perimeter was only partially lit, the base a patchwork of electric lights, oil drum fires, even a few bonfires. Outside the perimeter, a couple of long-burning coal mine fires glowed like dim, angry volcanoes. Sprays of tracer from perimeter positions livened things up. Chief Crowder called me up as we orbited the airfield. "They don't want us to land! Saying they don't have the ground crew to support an airship."

"How are you on fuel?"

"Little over half full, Sir. I don't trust anything I get out of this place nohow."

"All right. Drop me off and circle. I'll get with you in a couple of hours."

Crowder nodded, looking at the dark spectacle below us. "You'll need commo. Pak, sign the captain out a Wif-com and make sure he has a spare battery."

I was gearing up in my new army blues and my old desert camo flak jacket. They made an odd pairing but I got the feeling the biggest threat in the Pitts wouldn't be Zac. I was checking the loads in my M4 when Pak offered me a small radio and a clipboard. "Here's your Wif-com. Sign here."

I signed, turned it on. "Looks like a radio to me."

Pak shrugged, giving a shy grin. "Navy has to have a different name for everything. That's a wireless frequency communicator, also known as a Wif Com. Range is about five clicks. We'll be listening on channel 11."

"Good to go. Do you have any flares?"

LTAC49 filled up the sky as it hovered over a disused portion of airstrip, dropping me off. By the time I was checking my gear, a pair of Hum-Vees with flashing lights and MP markings were racing up to me.

The MP's who got out were very pressed and polished and slightly overweight. The Lieutenant in charge looked at me like I was a bug. Nobody was pointing weapons at me, but everyone had them out. That was actually reasonable.

"Put down your weapons and put your hands above your head!" The LT strode forward like divine wrath itself, a pistol in his hand. "You have made an unauthorized landing in a zone under Martial Law and you are subject to arrest and confinement for-"

"Can it, Lieutenant." I really didn't have time for his games. I only had time for my games. I give him the orders that said I was an inspector for the Adjutant General's office. "I'm here on orders straight from Fifth Corps. You're instructed to assist me fully. I need to talk to a David Reimer, a civilian staying at this base."

That gave them a bit of a shock. A couple of the MP's gave each other glances. One actually looked scared. Interesting.

The MP lieutenant read my orders and cleared his throat. He reminded me of a kid caught after he'd thrown a rock through someone's window. "Dave Reimer's not- There is no person named David Reimer on this base, sir."

"Dave's not here, man." I couldn't resist. The Lieutenant didn't seem to get the joke. I went on. "Don't you even want to check? There are supposedly three thousand personnel at this base, military and civilian."

The light was bad but the LT seemed to be getting more sickly looking with every word I said. Or it could have just been the bad lighting. "I'm, uh, very familiar with-"

A radio in one of the Hum-vees howled, squelch set not nearly high enough. Volume set way too high though. I could clearly hear the voice on the other end. "Patrol One, who the hell just landed at my airport? Is it an unauthorized delivery? Patrol one, answer!"

He almost ran back to the Hum-vee, turning down the radio. A few minutes later, he looked over at me, considerably deflated. "Sir, General Hammond wishes to speak with you."

Hammond's voice was friendly, confident. "Captain Sykes, is it? I'm afraid you'd been sent here on a wild goose chase. There is no Dave Reimer at this base. We have a flight going out in a couple of hours, or you can call back your ride if you wish."

He sounded very smooth. Maybe he wasn't lying. Then again, maybe that black stuff inside a zombie's skull is raspberry jelly.

"Thank you for the offer Sir. But as the Lieutenant obviously told you, I've been sent here on orders from Fifth Corps and the JAG office. I have it on excellent authority that he is here. The matter I need to speak with Dave Reimer on is unrelated to the operation of this base. But if he is hiding among your garrison, I may have to call in an investigative team from CID to interview your troops and conduct a full investigation. I know those can be very disruptive of normal operations, but if that is our only option, I can get on the horn to Fifth Corps right now."

And if half what I've heard about the Pitts is true, General, the last thing in the world you need is a CID investigative team crawling up your ass.

A personal radio beeped on the Lieutenant. Their own wireless, apparently. He grabbed it and spoke furtively, facing away from me. I got the impression this kid was used to shooting people with inconvenient questions rather than coming up with a decent lie.

The General's voice over the radio again. "Captain? I've instructed Lieutenant Hill to assist you and escort you through the base while you're here. There is a civilian consultant who might be the person you're looking for."

The Lieutenant gave me a sickly grin.

###

Out on the perimeter, it was a straggling line of chain link fence, concertina wire, barbed wire scavenged from some farm, connex boxes and wrecked busses forming a half-assed wall fading off into the night. The troops holding the lines were the kind of soldiers you'd expect to find holding those lines on a post the army was using as a dumping ground. They seemed to have sorted themselves out along racial and ethnic lines but there was no qualitative difference I could tell. Uniforms were dirty, equipment was haphazardly slung or missing, noise and light discipline was nonexistent. The perimeter was obviously a free fire zone and there seemed to be a lot of shooting for an established perimeter. Then again, with all the flares and loud music playing, the base was probably drawing in Zack from all over the state.

Some soldiers were obviously stoned, high or drunk. I smelled marijuana and khat more than once. We passed one groups of soldiers loudly celebrating their return from a patrol. By their accents, they were from well south of the Mason-Dixon line, with several confederate flags proudly displayed. They also proudly displayed bottles of looted whiskey and wine, rattling bags of loot from pharmacies with all sorts of chemical goodies, or jewelry looted from stores. They made loud boasts of how they'd be able to trade this loot for time with "the girls" or visits to the pharmacy.

Lieutenant Hill looked like he wished he was dead. Finally he spoke. "General Hammond encourages the units on the line to be pro-active in patrolling and engaging the zombies. It keeps the local undead population down. There's also an incentive program for bringing in militarily valuable items out of the ruins, to augment the base supplies."

"Sure there is, Lieutenant. Do we have much farther to go?"

"Just a bit more sir. Keep in mind, there's an ongoing shortage of doctors. They suffered some of the heaviest losses during the first wave of infections. The individual we're going to meet is a trained doctor, the best we've been able to get, so we cut him a lot of slack, even if he is a civilian. But you can't believe much of what he says."

"Freeze motherfucker!" The voice was panicked, high on something, on the verge of cracking. It came from a black soldier holding an M203, the M4 rifle with a 40mm grenade launcher underneath the barrel. Serious firepower. The soldier's eyes were wide, the whites standing out in panic.

He wasn't aiming it at us though. He was aiming it at half a dozen other black soldiers, but he whipped it towards us as we came around a corner. He was bare to the waist.

One of the other black soldiers spoke. "Put that down, niggah! You gon' kill somebody!"

"I gon' kill everybody before I let you kill me! You motherfuckers see a scratch and right away you say he been bit, shoot him! Ain't no damn bite! I scratched myself on the barbed wire! Ain't no one gone kill me fo' a scratch!"

"Shit man, you been bit!" A voice from the back, anonymous in the darkness. "Stupid niggah! Gone die and then bite us all when we sleepin'! Fuck that!"

"No, fuck you! I blow all your bitch asses away before I let you shoot me!"

"Ain't no scratch when that zack was hidin' under all the bodies and bit you!"

This looked bad. The Lieutenant started to step forward. I stopped him. A situation like this, all it needed to go to full disaster was an outsider stepping in and making themselves a target.

One of them, a sergeant, spoke up. "Chill Darnell, chill! We got the Roach comin'! He gon' check you out."

"Yeah, get the Roach! The Roach'll know!"

Things didn't quite degenerate into a firefight over the next couple of minutes, until two more soldiers came through. The biggest one was huge and quiet, a red cross armband on one brawny arm with a medic's pouch over one shoulder. The other hand held a pistol. The soldier with the M203 recognized him instantly. "Roach! Glad you here! These motherfuckers like to kill me for a scratch! Tell 'em it ain't no bite!"

The Roach's voice was quiet, but it carried. "Let me see it, Darnell. I got to take a close look. Real close."

"Okay. You. But nobody else." Darnell let the Roach approach him silently, then turn on a flashlight, looking at the torn pants leg of Darnell's uniform. He got up finally, wiping his hands after he turned off the flashlight. Everyone was silent.

"It's a scratch, that's all." The Roach spoke finally. Calming. Reassuring. "Just a scratch from some of that friggly ass barb wire we got. Darnell, you need a tetanus shot."

Darnell almost sobbed, lowering his M203 and almost collapsing. "I knew it. I knew it was just a scratch." A chorus of jeers came from the other soldiers.

There was a gunshot.

Darnell dropped, the right side of his skull suddenly blasted out.

The Roach put away his little .380 automatic, shook his head sadly. "It was a bite, Darnell."

The other soldiers were silent now. The sergeant stepped forward, taking the weapon from the corpse. The others came forward silently.

The Roach looked at us. "Sir? Lieutenant Hill, what you doin' out here?"

"We're here to see the doctor, Corporal. Can you take us in?"

"Yessir, but you know he hates late night visitors."

The Doctor appeared to be living in an old hangar, set just on the outside of the perimeter. The concertina wire and chain link fencing around this building was well set up with no gaps. The building itself was guarded by half a dozen MP's. Interestingly, for a doctor's shop at a base deep in the Red Zone, there was no traffic going in and out.

Inside, the walls had been soundproofed. A generator ran somewhere and I caught a whiff of air conditioning. The cool air on my skin made me realize how hot and clammy it had been outside. The Roach, whose uniform tag read "Woodall" pressed the codes in two separate keypads to get in. The second keypad came with a phone. "Corporal Woodall? What brings you here?"

"Sorry to bother you, Doctor, but we have visitors. A captain from Fifth Corps and Lieutenant Hill."

"Lieutenant Hill can stay outside, Corporal. I don't feel like having this place fumigated. I'll talk to the Captain."

Hill shoved himself forward. "I'm sorry Doctor, but I have my orders. I've been ordered to accompany Captain Sykes at all times."

"It's your neck, Lieutenant." The door buzzed. It was plate steel, the hinges squealing like damned souls as it opened. "The Roach" gave us a quick tip of the hat and left. Hill seemed reluctant to let him go, but even more reluctant to speak.

Inside, the furnishings were spare, but tasteful. Exquisite paneling made it look like the reception room of a doctor's office, complete with magazines. The man who met us was middle aged, his face sharp featured, almost foxlike, dark hair going back in a widows peak, his eyes very alert. He seemed to draw in his breath before he spoke, each time, as if he was trying to convince you that what he was saying was vitally important.

Which, for that matter, some of it was.

"Captain Sykes? To what do I owe the honor?"

"Sir, I've been sent by Fifth Corps Intel to question you about any interaction you've had with Colonel Walter Kurtz, Senator Anson Williams, the Walderberg Group and an establishmentknown as "The Think Tank."."

Reimer pursed his lips. "Come with me. Leave your weapons in the locker there."

He indicated a locker, watched as we put our weapons and gun belts in it. Then he turned and walked away. We followed. We walked past rooms where I could smell traces of alcohol, ether, other chemicals, with chemistry lab equipment to match. Other rooms were fixed up with computers, living quarters, sleeping quarters. A tall redheaded woman- girl really- in army blue slacks cutoff to shorts and a halter top watched a TV in one room. She tried to talk with Reimer as we passed. He silenced her with a wave of his hand.

We ended up in the most cluttered room in the place, but also the one that looked the most used.

He seemed too assured. I tried to rattle his cage. "Doctor, would you mind telling me what you're doing operating a meth lab in the middle of a US Army base?"

It didn't shake him. He smiled. "Very good, Captain. There's a brain working behind those steely grey eyes. What else have you noticed?"

"That you're obviously doing this with the support of General Hammond. That he is probably supplying you with raw materials through the loot his troops scavenge out in the Pittsburgh ruins, so CID doesn't have to see anything smuggled in. That he uses part of the meth you manufacture to keep the troops in line."

"Captain, that's going too far!" Hill stood up, faked outrage radiating from him like an aura. "You are insulting a great officer with baseless-"

"Oh shut up, Hill." Reimer shot him three times with a silenced pistol. I hadn't seen the pistol before. Reimer was full of surprises.

The pistol barrel looked very small as he aimed at me. "Stay still, captain. I'm about to put this pistol away, I just don't want you to shoot me by reflex. Loyalty to a brother officer and all."

"He ain't my brother, Doctor. He's just heavy."

He put the pistol down, slowly, looked at the corpse and shook his head. "It was inevitable, really. With the real US army showing up, Hammond's little game is about to end. I wonder if Hammond realizes that. I assume Hill left his squad waiting outside?"

"Five men, all armed."

"That gives me about an hour. Candice?"

The redhead looked in. I noticed she'd armed herself. No Hollywood pointing at the ceiling for this girl. She had her rifle braced against her shoulder and sweeping the room as she came around the corner. "What have you done now, Doctor?"

"Our lease is about up, Candice. Do you still want to come with me?"

"Hell yes."

"Then we roll in fifteen minutes. Could you please contact corporal Woodall and let him know he has fifteen minutes to get to the rendezvous point? No more than one additional friend, if he's late or brings anyone extra we will not stop for him."

She left. He sat down, shook his head. Then his hands shook. He gripped his chair, closed his eyes, counted slowly. At the count of twenty, he opened his eyes, visibly calmer. "My apologies, Captain. You'd think I'd be over it, but even now, killing someone disturbs me."

"Not to contradict the only man in the room with a gun, doctor, but was this really necessary? If you needed protection from General Hammond-"

He laughed.

"From that buffoon? No, Captain, Hammond was a big stupid wall I could hide behind. As long as I kept him supplied with meth, he'd leave me alone. Hell, I could probably talk my way out of killing Lieutenant Hill. No, it's Kurtz who scares me. He should scare you. If you've been able to track me here, Kurtz will too."

"Why would he track you?"

"I have something he wants, Captain."

He pulled a bottle out of his desk and poured himself a drink.

"Before this all started, I was the research assistant to Doctor Hans Bergholm at the Royal Institute of Science in Denmark. I took the job as his assistant straight out of medical school for the chance to work with him. His work with Beta blockers and antivirals was revolutionary. If any one man could have found an effective antiviral agent for the Z virus, it would have been him. The Walderberg Group called us in for a consultation, about two months after New York fell. They flew us into Big Mountain, but they'd only let Doctor Bergholm go on to the Think Tank. I relaxed at the resort, waiting for him. On the third day, he called me from his satellite phone. He sent me an attachment. He wasn't afraid, but he was outraged. The next day, he didn't call. There was a news release that he and his assistant had been killed in a tragic lab accident. The assistant was me. I didn't stick around to let them tidy up any loose ends."

"So what was in the attachment?"

He pressed a couple of buttons on his computer. A video came up, grainy, like a poorly done transfer from video to digital. There were two zombies in an enclosure. Someone had dressed them in 70's fashions as some kind of sick joke. They were throwing themselves against the chain link walls of their enclosure, trying to get to someone standing outside.

That someone came into view. Another polyester suit, this one holding some kind of electronic gear, about the size of a toaster. He flicked a switch and the two Z's were suddenly still, staring slack jawed at the toaster. Then he opened the door to the cage and stepped inside, standing next to them. That close, a living body should have had them in a frenzy.

Then it hit me. "They're fake. People dressed as zombies. Is this from some horror movie?"

"Keep watching."

The man holding the radio pulled out a pistol. He put it to the temple of one Z and pulled the trigger.

I've seen a lot of human heads take a bullet in the last few years. This one looked just like the rest of them. Very real.

Jump cut. Interruption in video. Now he's holding a machete. The Z that's still functional stares at him. He chops sideways, a single strong hard stroke, making a noise like chopping open a coconut.

Yep, that's what the inside of a zombie skull looks like.

"Okay, if this video isn't a fake, they have a technology that makes zombies passive. So what? Why aren't they selling them and becoming filthy rich?"

"Check the time and date stamp on the video."

The numbers and letters were small, grainy, hard to read. It took me a minute. Another minute to read it again. The answer was obvious. "Bullshit. This is a fake. They set the date and time for a video camera to.."

"February 11th, 1974." Reimer finished his drink. "Fake or not, Kurtz and the Walderberg Group are willing to kill to get this back. Other than you, every person besides me who has seen this has been killed."

"What's that device he's holding? What's it supposed to be?"

"A sound emitter of some kind. But there's no sound on the audio track. That made me think it might be ultrasonics. It's out of my field, really. I don't have the equipment I need to test the theory. I played around with a dog whistle and some recent expires here. The results were fascinating. The right notes could render any expiree- any zombie- totally passive. But even the slightest variation in tone or pitch might throw them into a frenzy. Instant, manic attack. They'd tear themselves apart trying to get to a living human being."

He gave me a small red USB drive. "Here. Now you have all the data I have. I'm afraid I have no idea where Kurtz is. With the lieutenant dead, do you need a lift out of here? I'm certain that Hammond has arranged for accidents for a number of individuals before."

"I can call in a lift, if you can show me to the roof. What about you?"

"Candice and I will disappear. I have an LAV I've kept fueled and supplied for just such a situation. It has gold, food, trade items, everything we need to find some place and disappear. In a city with half a million corpses, stealing ID from some of the corpses was one of the easier things I've had to do. We'll drive out of this place on the other side of the building from Hill's goons and five minutes later, this place will explode. Can you be out by then?"

I was already on the Wif-com. Pak answered as we climbed the ladder to the roof access. "Doctor, how did you get explosives past Hammond?"

Reimer laughed, a short, barking laugh. "Captain, this is a meth lab. The hard part is keeping it from blowing up."

I braced myself on the roof, prepping one of my flares. "You could always come with me, doctor. Wouldn't you like to find out the truth?"

Reimer laughed again. "Sorry, but I'm going as far from this place as I can get. You're in the asshole of the world, Captain!"

I lit my signal flare, waved it back and forth over my head as I heard the roof hatch shut behind me..

**Part 4 -Kurtz**

"What are you?"

The voice penetrates my agony. My arms have settled down to a steady, tearing ache, except where the dislocated shoulder is true pain. I have a pinched nerve, one running up my arm. Every time I cough, it feels like a wire is being torn out of my chest, another out of my forearm. I am cold and exhausted and covered in filth, my wrists chafing where they are tied behind my back, around the pole that holds me here. The cord around my neck, the noose tied to the pole, chafes more, not quite loosened from the last time I dozed off. If my head droops, the noose tightens again, choking me in my sleep.

When was the last time I slept? Has it been two days? Three? There is no daylight, down here in the caves. Only the endless ranks of the dead and my captors. Them and the hulking figure in front of me.

"What are you?"

"A soldier." I choke out the words. "I'm a soldier."

"You're not a soldier. You're a clerk, sent by accountants, to collect a bill." Kurtz's profile is distinct, even here in the dim light. "Why did they send you to kill me?"

"They said you'd gone...insane. That your methods were unacceptable."

"And are my methods .." He pauses, vastly amused. "Unacceptable?"

I think about the fenceposts topped with skulls, the sea of undead outside the fence, the tribal warriors, men and women bedecked with fetishes of human fingers and ears. "Sir, I don't see any method at all."

So tired. So tired. Dozing off...

It's dark, summer lightning briefly lighting the compartment, my body swaying in the hammock. Wind in the branches all around us. Chef's voice somewhere else in the blimp, indistinct. His voice is distracted, hazy. The screams had been in my head. One of my collection of nightmares.

I wouldn't be able to sleep for a while, so I rolled out of the hammock. The blimp shifted suddenly and I put my hand on a nearby hammock to steady myself. Stumble against it even harder when the blimp rocked again. I impacted against a human form suspended in canvas.

When I straightened up, a pistol barrel was pressed into my forehead.

In the darkness, I could see the staring right eye, all skin pulled back from it, the teeth exposed in the scarred face in a half, leering grin. The left side of the face exquisitely beautiful and dark. A feminine voice, cold yet sensual. "What are you doing?"

I held up my hands in supplication. "Sorry. Sorry, I just stumbled against you accidentally. Didn't mean to grope you, honest."

The gun disappeared. "I will accept that, this time. Not the next time."

"Fair enough." I couldn't help but ask. "That happens a lot?"

"It is hard for you to believe the hideously scarred girl might have to fear men groping her?" Salida frowned with the side of her face that she could still control. "You forget the smurfette syndrome."

"Huh?"

"When one woman is alone among a group of men, she instantly becomes the desirable one, no matter what she looks like." She withdrew part of her face into the covering of the hammock. "Like smurfette on the smurfs show."

"Is that why you're out here?"

"I am out here because I live. The one who did this to me thought I would kill myself. Instead, now they are dead and I live. Do you hate the zack?"

That stopped me. I looked into that one dark eye that seemed to be gazing clear through me. "I don't know. I guess not."

"Many do. Yet they only do what the disease compels them to do. What compelled the boy who did this to me? Should I not hate him?"

I didn't have an answer to give. She turned over, black hair a patch of midnight in the darkness.

I still couldn't sleep. So I ambled to where Chef and Reyes were standing watch on the bridge.

"So there I was man, in a tub with Britney Spears, all full of peaches and cream." Chef's eyes were distracted. Who could blame him? Reality had nothing on his dream. "And we were rubbing cream all over each other, and peaches, and ooh, man.." He sat up, suddenly focused. "I think I saw an orchard when we came into this place. I'm gonna go get some peaches."

"Hey, man, at night? Here? You crazy, man!" Reyes was laughing, shaking his head. "Crazy anglo, what you thinking?"

"I'm gonna go find some peaches, man! Where's a bucket?"

It had been two weeks since we left the Pitts. Two weeks of criss-crossing the Appalachians, looking for visual traces of Kurtz's hideout. We'd seen a lot of Zack and a lot of treetops. Mostly treetops. I'd never realized before how solid the forests were in these hills. You could have hidden a million men under the leaves. Here and there were burnt out farms or abandoned pissant little towns wedged in between the hills. No signs of the living.

When a storm came in, we dropped LTAC-49 "Streetgang" down in one small valley between the cliffs, to get it out of the wind. Now we bobbed, ten feet off the ground, tethered to some beat-to-shit barn or chicken coop or whatever the hell it had been. There was a full moon and Chef was talking about peaches. He was even putting on his CC suit.

"You can't go out alone, Chef!" Reyes was getting serious now. "You ain't gettin' me out there either!"

Maybe it was boredom. Maybe frustration. I spoke. "I'll go. What the hell."

So I found myself walking between the abandoned farm buildings, following Chef on his mad quest for peaches. I hadn't paid much attention to the buildings when I came in, but now I noticed several of them were chain-link fence, backed up by steel bars. Seriously big cages, now broken open.

"What the hell was this place?"

"I don't know, man. There's gotta be some peaches around here somewhere."

That's when we heard something moving in the brush. Something big.

Chef and I both froze. At night, you see with your ears. Over the sound of the wind, we could hear something moving in the brush.

"What is it man? Zombies?" Chef had forgotten all about peaches. He had his pistol out, ready to shoot.

I swept my rifle over the area of the noise, trying to see with the edges of my vision, trying to sort out the noises from the background of the storm. It didn't sound like Zack. Zombies in heavy brush sound like elephants blundering around. But there was all the background noise, the wind, the branches- and Chef, making enough background noise by himself to drown out a dozen zombies, while he flicked on a flashlight, the white light stabbing into the darkness.

"Hey man, check this out! This place used to be a wild animal farm!"

The roar was deafening.

Chef's flashlight played across golden eyes and huge white fangs.

He screamed.

I fired my rifle on full rock and roll, strobe-lighting the night as a turned and ran, spraying bullets back in the darkness. A second later, Chef, screaming, ran past me, bucket and peaches forgotten. We both fled, hearing the roar behind us, running to the ladder.

The landing lights of the blimp flashed on, lighting up the whole area as Chef swarmed up the ladder like a deranged monkey. Reyes was already manning the door gun, spraying machine gun fire into the woods we'd left behind. I came up the ladder as fast as I could, barely hanging onto my rifle as I climbed.

"What is it?" Six-gun and Pak, both in the navy sweats they slept in, were at the door, weapons in hand, looking for targets. "Zombies?"

"It's a fucking tiger!" Chef threw himself on the deck, sobbing. "Fucking tiger!"

As the adrenaline faded, I laughed. "It must have escaped when things fell apart. From a zoo, or some private collector."

Reyes stopped shooting, looking out into the night, wondering. "A tiger? Shit, man!"

"Never get out of the blimp!" Chef was damn near in a fetal position, rocking as the rest of the crew gave some nervous laughter. "Never get out of the blimp. Never get out of the fucking blimp!"

I'm trying to laugh but I can't breath, gasp for air, cutting pain around my throat...

I wake.

Back into my personal hell. The underworld that Kurtz has made his own. The mobs of zack around me, not eating, not moving. Blank eyes staring. Sometimes a movement goes through them, like breezes through grain as they all loosely shuffle. Then they are still again.

Chef's voice is still there. "Shoulda never got out of the blimp, man. Captain, heads up, you got to breath!"

The stench of cannibis. Chef is looking me in the face, his eyes narrowed in concern. "This is your great leader, man? This is what your boss does?"

"He goes too far sometimes, I know that. He's a tormented soul." Hopper is older, long stringy grey hair and mustache, half a dozen cameras slung on him. Hopper is crouched, pain on his face. "I know man, you look at the skulls and the zack and you think he's lost it. But he sees things, man, he sees things. He's a warrior poet, a bard, like, when he'll grab you and shove you against the wall and tell you that the two letters in the middle of life are "If". The two middle words in the middle of death are "At". He's profound that way, man."

"That's deep, man." Chef is studying me, his expression much more focussed than his normal New Orleans drawl. "Hey, Hopper, they're going to be eating in a little while man, I got the munchies. Think you can get us something before chow?"

"Sure, man. You coming?"

"In a minute, man. Let me see if I can talk Mr Military-Industrial complex around, okay?"

Hopper leaves. I wonder if the wobble in his movement is his, or my battered perceptions.

There's a water bottle at my lips, tilting. I open my mouth and cool water pours in, ambrosia, cool life flowing into my body. I almost sob, so desperate for water. Chef's voice goes low, quiet. "Captain, wake up. Sir, you have to pay attention. Can you understand me?"

"I'm here, Chef. Untie me, please.."

"I can't yet, sir. I only got a couple minutes. They'd see. This Kurtz guy, he's the one you're here to kill, right?"

"That's right, Chef. Go ahead and tell them."

"No, sir, I get it. I get it. I'll kill him, sir. Then I'll come back and get you out of here."

With a struggle, I focus my attention. Ignore the pain, breathe deep. Focus. "Chef, did you just-"

I can pick up Chef's vibe of fear and desparation, but under it all, anger. "That sick bastard has to die. Him and his tame zombies and his wackoes. It's fuckin' pagan idolatry out there man and Kurtz thinks he's this god of death. Fuckin'-A I'll kill him. Everybody out there's so stoned, it'll be easy. Nobody's paying attention to my goofy ass. You just hang tough sir, just a little longer and I'll get you out of here."

He slips away into the darkness.

I begin breathing exercises, half-remembered meditations. Digging into myself for my last reserves of energy. When Chef comes back, we'll have to move fast.

###

We were cruising over one more stretch of forest. Clean was watching below with binoculars. "We're being lied to, man."

"Which particular lie are you referring to?" I was using binoculars as well. Pak had the blimp's whole array of scanners and surveyor gear going, as well as an uplink to one of our few remaining recon sats. This area at least showed signs that someone was living here. Thermal imaging of campfires under the trees, some farm fields that had been recently harvested. Almost no Z's. But there weren't nearly enough campfires or thermal images for the size of force Kurtz had to have.

"They're telling us that, what, 30 percent of the population has been killed, right?"

"Yeah."

"That's got to be bullshit. More than half the country is empty man. That's like, a hundred twenty million people. They aren't all on the west coast. And there's way more Z's than thirty percent."

"Clean, 30 percent of the US dead means about 70 million zombies."

"But how many got killed as zombies? I've seen a lot of places where the dead zombies were piled up, even where they overran some place. Once somebody gets their head on straight, one guy with a rifle can kill a hundred zombies, easy. But there's still shitloads of zack everywhere, even here. Down in Mexico, man, that's the land of the dead down there. Seventy percent of us are still alive? I think the ratio is reversed, man."

The worst part was, I had a feeling he was on to something. Like I said, there was a brain working under that california beach bum exterior. Did the government dare tell us the true figures? You needed wings to stay above the garbage that I already knew was being thrown around. Everyone was still pointing fingers at each other trying to fix the blame on who'd tried to keep Zack classified for months. How many people died in the early days because no one knew the only way to kill a zombie was a headshot? How many started biting and reinfecting, after it was thought they'd been immunized?

"Sir?" It was Pak. I'd finally decided to let him take a look at the video file I'd gotten from Doctor Reimer, back at the Pitts.

I went to Pak, who was, as always, working at his computers. "What did you find?"

"Sir, whoever made this was really trying to sell this thing. The original video isn't VHS or Beta, it's old style industrial video, the kind they made before home VCR's were available. A special format. Nobody's used those in years."

"So it's an elaborate fake. Any clues on who made it?"

"There's some fragments of Walderberg Group video on the file, but nothing definite. It's been copied several times, so the fingerprints are pretty faint. Why would someone fake this?"

"Disinformation. Some kind of coverup. I don't know. When I find Kurtz, I'll ask him. Keep looking at it when you can. You sent a file to Fifth Corps S-2?"

"Yes sir. Sent and confirmed."

"We got somebody!" Crowder called back. "Smoke. Looks like somebody alive up there!"

I adjusted for the sudden movement of the blimp as Crowder changed course. When I was up by him, I could see what he was talking about. A little dead end valley, in between the hills. Cleared farm fields and smoke from woodfires, all on a narrow river bottom with steep hills going up on each side. Houses surrounded by a chain link fence that looked new. Through the binoculars, I could even see people. One skinny kid and several women, looking back at us. Chef saw them too, through his own binoculars.

"Oh baby! Those daisy dukes look good on you!" Chef was grinning broadly. "Don't see any guys around though."

Reyes was already straightening up his uniform, looking in a mirror. "Wonder why no guys?"

"Dead, out hunting, working the fields, who knows?" Crowder was grinning for the first time since I'd come on board. "Sir, they're locals. Maybe they heard something. We should talk to them."

I'm out of ideas. We go in low and slow, the locals watching us, Six-gun at the helm, Reyes at Lee Helm working the engines. Crowder and Chef are rigging the drop lines while Clean and I get into CC suits.

I hear four blasts. Mortars. I heard the damn things enough in the 'Stan. What are they doing here?

A javelin hits one of the windows, starring the plexiglass, sticking in it. There's a rope tied to the end of the javelin.

Clean yelps, an arrow in his thigh. "What the hell?"

Crowder ducks, looking out the door. "We're being grabbed! Those are grappling lines!"

I can see where he points. Long ropes have been fired over the dirigible, probably by the mortars. Four lines going over the top of the gasbag. Visions of Gulliver in Lilliput go through my head. "They're trying to grab the blimp!"

We jolt, at least one of the lines holding onto the blimp. I see another one go taut, snagged on something. "Chief, they're trying to capture the blimp! We have to cut those lines!"

"Lee Helm, go easy on the speed! We don't want those ropes to tear the gasbags open!" Crowder's eyes are wide as he thinks on his feet. He runs to an access hatch in the cieling. "Chef, you're coming with me! Captain, you got a knife?"

"Yes, go! Go!"

Chef howled. "This ain't my damn job! I'm the fucking cook!"

"Get up the damn ladder, Chef!"

Chef already had his own knife out, a big switchblade. The Chief had a big swiss army knife out. Apparently, carrying knives is old tradition among sailors. I had a parachute riggers knife, a souvenir from jump school. We swarmed up the access ladder that passed between the separate gas bags inside the skin of the dirigible, brushing against the layered mylar.

We scrambled onto the top of the blimp. A canvas strip running down the top of the gas bag formed a kind of walkway, with guidelines fastened to either side for us to hang onto. It was still terrifying as hell, even before we saw the cables pulling across the top of the gasbag. I scrambled towards the nearest one, tensioning and making a deep impression in the bag, cutting it where it went across the canvas. It was tough Kevlar line, slick and hard to cut, but the tension made it easier, even as I felt the blimp rock beneath me, the ducted fans roaring at full power, trying to generate lift.

The line parted with a sudden musical note, sailing off. I looked back, saw Chef and Crowder still sawing at their lines. Chef cut through his but he'd made the mistake of putting a leg near the line. It whipped him off to slide, screaming, down the side of the gasbag. The chief got his line and went after number four as the blimp tilted, rocking me loose, hanging onto the guidelines for dear life, my rigger's knife spinning off down into the trees below. I felt the last line go and the chief shouting in triumph.

The shout was cut off. I was almost up on the walkway, almost steady when I saw him, eyes wide in shock, gaping at the jagged point jutting from his chest. Blood and some kind of black ichor dripped from the blade. He said two words.

"A spear?"

Then he tumbled off.

That was when the blimp rocked furiously and I lost my grip. I fell, screaming, through the tree branches. Leaves and twigs lashed me, then thicker branches struck me, slamming into me harder and harder. But slowing me. I grabbed desperately at a thicker branch, gripped it- then felt sudden agony as the weight of my plunging body dislocated my shoulder. Screaming, slowed even more, it seemed as if the branches hit even harder, white hot agony that ended suddenly as I plunged into a stream.

Impact was in cold mud, water splashing around me. I was on autopilot, the way they train you in SAR school. Move. Move or die. Keep moving. My head spinning, shock dulling the pain from my dislocated arm, my cracked ribs, just move, move-

Crowder, spread eagled on the ground, spear point jutting from his chest. I went over to check him, my head beginning to steady. No blood flow from the spear point. Eyes wide open in shock, unmoving. Body still. I checked for a pulse.

His hands grabbed me.

His eyes suddenly going wide with mindless hatred. Mindless hunger.

His mouth opening in the feeding reflex, teeth bloody from ruptured blood vessels and bitten lips. A low "urrrrrrrrrr" came from his mouth as he dragged me closer to his mouth, the spear jutting from his chest growing harder and harder against my chest as I struggled to break free. My dislocated arm in too much agony to push, only one good arm to hold myself off the spear.

Trying to get some footing, some leverage, spear tip coming through even the tough material of my army blues, bloody teeth snapping inches from my face-

Desperate, I wedged my knee between us, hot agony singing again as I used my dislocated arm to grab my pistol and shove it against his head. Pull the trigger.

I shoved myself off him, onto my back, looking up at the trees. Exhausted. Trying to marshal my resources. Breathing exercises, breath deep, pull oxygen into the body, charge the body to run, to escape. I was deep in Kurtz's territory, I could tell. That ambush had been for us. Specifically for us. It had damned near succeeded. What did Kurtz want with a blimp? How had Crowder turned so damned quickly? Minimum time, abso-fucking-lute minimum was fifteen minutes and change.

Answers later. Time to go. I heaved my aching body to stand.

They were all around me. A dozen men and women, heavily armed. Dressed in a wild variety of clothes and uniforms. Wearing strings of human ears, strings of human fingers. One guy had a belt of human scalps.

And one big man in faded digi-cams, his big jutting chin and roman nose recognizable a mile away, squatting, watching me.

I tried to bring up the pistol in my hand. He grabbed my dislocated arm and twisted, his face cold, passionless.

I screamed with pain and fainted.

I dimly remember being dragged here, into the camp near a huge, abandoned coal mine. Past the fenced, camouflaged enclosure under the trees. Surrounded by thousands of zack, of all ages and sizes. All those thousands of dead eyes apathetically looking at me as I was dragged by them. Down into the caves where the dead men lie. Down into the heart of darkness. In the distance, I thought I heard children singing, voices echoing off cavern walls.. Then they tied me to this post.

Here I sit, waiting. Waiting for Chef. Outside the caves, far above, I can hear lightning and rain. I think it's night. The door to my cell is beat up, with holes torn in it. I can see lights and movement in the hallway outside.

The door opens. A big man, a figure growing more familiar moment by moment, steps in. He has a bundle in his arms. He drops it in my lap and walks back out of the room.

The filthy rags fall away.

It is Chef's head, the neck a bloody stump.

His eyes open. Dead eyes.

His mouth opens. Dead hunger.

He tries to bite at me in mindless hunger. All that is Chef gone from that face, twisted in animal hunger, forever changed, forever lost, biting at me.

I scream in shock and horror. Scream as I have never screamed. Kick his head away. Kick away the biting thing that wants to devour me.

Then it comes tearing out of my chest, muscles contorting in agony, every fiber of my being struggling against it uselessly as it tears itself out of my throat.

I sob.

I weep, sobs racking my body. Weeping like a child at the horror of this world, at all the dead, at the dead children, and the men and women who have to kill them again. My body twists inagony and grief as I weep for simple, honest Chef who tried to do the right thing and died for it. I haven't cried for a decade, not for anything. Now it all pours out and I cannot cry enough, sobbing, screaming my pain out to the world.

Above, outside, there is thunder.

**Part 5 - Heart of deadness.**

I expected to die after they killed Chef. I don't know how long I sat there, trapped, sobbing, broken. It was an eternity of pain. If they'd questioned me, I'd have told them anything they wanted. I had nothing more.

But after what seemed like forever, they cut me down. Took me away. I fainted as circulation came back into my arms. I was carried away, washed and dressed in clean clothes.

Only if you've had to spend hours in agony can you appreciate the bliss of simply not feeling pain. I didn't wonder, I didn't care, I was just glad it had stopped. I emptied my mind, thinking of nothing. The first drink of water was bliss. The first cigarette was ecstasy.

Gradually, I became aware of my surroundings. I was in another cell, but this one was clean, warm. Dry. Hopper was with me constantly, observing. Silent for once, playing with the half dozen cameras he carried. In three days, he only spoke once. "I'm sorry about Chef. I came here to chronicle this, to record the beginning of a new world, you know? Kurtz saved my life. If you knew him then, man, if you only knew him then..."

Food was brought in by four of Kurtz' warriors. Men who'd hung tribal fetishes and grisly trophies all over themselves. Who'd left behind uniforms and civilization for warpaint and weapons.

On the third day, Kurtz came in with them. He still wore clothes, baggy old cammies, hanging loose on his huge frame. He watched me eat silently, then rose. "Come with me, Captain."

He led me to the elevator. We were on a mine level, like I'd suspected.

We walked past what looked like a nursery. It sounded like nearly a hundred kids, around ten or so. Kurtz gave the first smile I'd seen on him. "We've rescued so many children. Wandering in the hills. It is the fundamental impulse of a parent to sacrifice themselves so their child can get away. Logic dictates that the adult has a better chance of long term survival than a lone child, that the child should be sacrificed. But parents continue throwing themselves in the path of death, to give their children one more chance to escape. It's things like that which give me hope for the human race."

The elevator took us to the upper gallery, to the cavernous mine building. Hopper followed us for several minutes, taking pictures of Kurtz and I together, until Kurtz dismissed him. He spoke in a distracted tone. "The Walderberg group prepared these caves decades ago, as a fallback position. We have our own hydroelectric plant. We even have a Hawk Ten recycler. It can turn any polymer into fuel, oil or natural gas. I used to wonder why there weren't a dozen of them in every city in the nation. Then I became the reason why."

On the surface, the camp was beneath the trees, camo netting strung in the lower branches to add extra cover. There were less than a hundred human beings above ground, mostly Warriors. Outside the fence, there were Zack. Thousands of them, standing, staring, like the ones I'd seen near the cells. A mass of them disappearing into the darkness under the trees. Kurtz took me for a walk along the fence. Watched by a thousand dead eyes, I couldn't help it. I shrank away from the wall. "Why don't they..."

"Attack us? Use that hindbrain feeding mechanism? Ultrasonics, captain. A high-tech dog whistle, courtesy of the Walderberg Group. This whole area is blanketted from my office. In the early days, a few groups tried to attack us. Groups of the living. We closed the gates and reversed the settings, putting all these zombies into a frenzy. Sadly, the attackers were usually consumed beyond a point where we could add them to our number."

"You must make death your friend. If you do not, it becomes a fearsome enemy." He turned and thrust a jar of black, oily liquid at me. "There it is, Captain. the pure, distilled Z virus. If you can call it a virus. That was the closest we could come to identifying it. Some of the Walderberg scientists theorized it was a kind of self replicating nanotechnology. But those are all words. In the end, meaningless. What is in that jar, Captain, is death."

I took the jar. Studied it. "I saw a tape. From the 1970's."

Kurtz nodded, putting out his hand to take the jar back. "The Walderberg group first isolated the Z virus in 1971. The first outbreak was near here, in Pennsylvania, in the late '60s. A returning satellite disintegrated above the area, scattering it across ten backwoods counties. The incident was, of course, hushed up."

I whipped the jar against a steel fence post as hard as I could. If the jar shattered, enough would be left to throw it in Kurtz' face.

Except it didn't shatter. Seconds later, two warriors were on me, pinning me to the ground, taking away the jar. Kurtz stood there, smiling like a buddha. "You did not disappoint, captain. You hesitated a moment. You're not suicidal. But you worked it out in your head that you could kill me and you were willing to  
>sacrifice yourself to do it."<p>

"If you like that, you're going to love my next trick!"

Kurtz nodded. "You'll do. For your information, the acrylic making up that jar could withstand a fifty story drop. Let him up, gentlemen. Captain, please refrain from trying to kill me while we're talking. This is very important."

They let me up. Then they watched me, two human dobermans ready to tear my throat out at his command. Kurtz waved at the mass of Z outside the fence. "Has it occured to you that they are making as much of a contribution to humanity now as they did when they were alive?"

I forced myself to listen. Kurtz began walking again.

"I began to realize it in the aftermath of Desert Storm. Our soldiers, our precious young men and women were sacrificing themselves to protect the world. But behind them were the contracters, the politicans, the movers and shakers whose only motivation was seeing how wealthy or powerful they could make themselves. Over the years I saw it more and more. Halliburton in Iraq, the wealthy in the stock market, the media, all out for their own interest with a million rationalizations and complete ignorance of the consequence of their actions. Who cared if their efforts sabotaged our efforts in Iraq? If they destroyed millions of jobs in our own nation? If they crashed the economy profiteering on real estate or oil? So long as they made a profit, nothing else mattered. Mindless greed, consuming the world. And a world of six billion souls, most of them able to do nothing more challenging than consume and obey."

"But I was a soldier. My duty was clear, or so I thought. I was not a politician. So I soldiered on. I had my comrades, I had my mission. We had an enemy who needed killing. Mindless fanatics who only seemed capable of thinking when they were trying to kill. Men who would put rifles in the hands of ten year old children and tell them to attack us. Not because they thought those children could kill our men, but because they knew it wounded the hearts of our soldiers to shoot children, even if it was to save their comrades. Duty kept me busy enough to forget my doubts. Until Afghanistan."

His face lost expression then, seeing places long ago and far away.

I'd done my damndest to forget the 'Stan. In some ways, I don't think Kurtz had ever left it.

"I was with an A-team in the field. I liked spending time with my people in the field, losing myself in the job. Patrolling for the enemy. We were trying to win their hearts and minds. We treated their sick. Helped them dig a new well. Immunized all the children in the village for half a dozen diseases. That night, the Muhajeddin moved in. They took the village and tried to wipe out my team. The battle went on all night. In the morning, we retook the village. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. Sometimes I wish I had died that night."

"In the night, while they held the village, the Muhajeddin had hacked off the arms of every immunized child."

Tears were running down his face as he spoke. "I saw that pile of tiny, bloody arms and I wept. That was when it hit me. Like a bullet. Like a silver bullet, right between the eyes. We couldn't win. The world was caught between mindless hate and mindless greed. Neither of them would ever stop. Both were powerful, both of them had taken on a life of their own. And the vast mass of humanity in between were sitting there, letting themselves be devoured."

He had stopped. Now he was looking as a young zombie, a girl. She couldn't have been more than ten when she died. She looked back, her face blank, empty.

Kurtz brushed fingers over her face, through the fence. I suddenly realized the gates in the fence were wide open.

"I think I went a little mad then. I wrote my final position paper. It had a charming title. "Drop the bomb. Exterminate them all." Kurtz chuckled. "It was not well recieved. Old friends in the army hushed it up. Looking after me, even after I resigned my commission. They recommended me for a position with the Walderberg Group, not knowing how perfect a fit I would be."

"The Group saw what I saw, Captain. But they had a solution. The Z virus. Used carefully, it would cleanse the world in an utterly ruthless restoration of survival of the fittest. Wiping away all ideologies, all fanaticisms in a struggle for a single goal. Survival. Leaving only the best one percent of humanity to a better world. But they needed to sabotage the original efforts to contain the plague, even as they spread it. They needed someone who knew the system from the inside out, to make sure the wrong people got the jobs. They needed me."

Suddenly, a thousand doubts I'd felt began to form a pattern. Deep down, I'd always suspected something like this. I'd told myself it was just paranoia. Now Kurtz said it was more and it all made sense.

"The key was to find people who would vigorously pursue the wrong course of action. It was always simple enough if you explained it in terms of making a profit, or helping their careers. Who the hell cared whether their policies actually worked? Give them enough time and incentive and they could make the worst failure look like a success. The alpha teams did more to spread fear and distrust of the government than anything we could have done. The immunization that didn't work, the diagnosis of the plague that was an outright lie, they did all of it to themselves, focussed on their own benefit." Kurtz looked into the darkness of the corpse-haunted woods. "Sometimes they took steps by themselves that we would never have dared propose. There were mayors and governers who tried to confiscate civilian weapons in the middle of it all, to preserve law and order. Civilization collapsing, the dead rising from their graves to consume the living and they were spending time trying to confiscate guns because they were dangerous!"

His voice had risen as he ranted, his arms spread out theatrically. Then, he grew silent, his arms dropping to his sides. "I wonder if they ever realized they were being played for fools? Did they realize it even when the zombies broke down the doors of their mansions and devoured their families before their eyes? I wonder."

It was like a curtain was being drawn back, revealing the stagecraft behind the show that had fooled me into believing it was reality. "What happened to the Think Tank, Colonel? How did your security fail? It seems like everything was going according to plan."

"Humanity proved much tougher than any of us thought, Captain. Even with our sabotage of the governmental efforts, people refused to die. It was inspiring really. There were simply too many people who refused to panic. We had to send teams to sabotage individual groups of survivors. Even those teams took heavy losses. But I noticed something worse. The rot inside the Think Tank itself."

We were at the gate now, looking at the river flowing down to the ohio. To one side, under a camouflaged canopy, there was a cubed stone pyramid. Like the ones on which aztec priests cut the living hearts from their victims. It was in the middle of a great pool of water. I think it had been the mount for a corporate logo, displayed in front of the mine. Now the logo was gone. In it's place, a huge pile of firewood was being prepared.

It was then that I noticed the posts. At the base of the pyramid, at even intervals, there were wooden posts set into the concrete, each one topped by a human head. Some were empty skulls. Others were skulls that had been picked clean of flesh, but the brains and the eyes were still there, still staring blankly around. Other heads were fresher, bloodier. Dead eyes looked mechanically from left to right, seeing nothing.

"They'd always been playing God. Now, I think they actually began to believe it. That they could do anything. These men and women had consigned billions to death. What did they care for morality? They began to indulge their darkest fantasies, their worst passions. Free from any restraint. Worse, they began talking of a world in which such things would be the privelige of the elite. Accepted."

"I couldn't consign future generations to that world, Captain. I had damned my soul, but for a better world, not for that. So I turned their own technology against them. I reversed the tones of the ultrasonics that protected their compound. It summoned zombies from miles away, even as I pulled out my few loyal guards. In a way, I suppose it was karma."

"So the final piece falls into place." I sat, the scope of the whole thing overwhelming my mind. In the distance, I heard lightning. Another thunderstorm, coming up the valleys. Storm clouds were black mountains in the distance. "You're finished. It's over."

"Oh no, Captain. Not at all." Kurtz squatted beside me, seemingly comfortable despite the fact that he was fifteen years older than me. "Almost half the population of the world still lives. The governments that created this all, too many of the people who created this all, still live. The whole rotten structure has been shaken to it's roots, but it needs one final push."

He held up the jar. It seemed to absorb the light around it. "The Z virus is anaerobic. Direct contact with oxygen, even oxygen dissolved in water, will kill it. It can only absorb oxygen through human tissue. But before I destroyed them, the scientists at the Think Tank developed a polymer liquid which could carry the Z virus in aerosol form, protecting it. Sprayed into the air, particles can remain viable for up to 72 hours outside a host body. Sprayed above a group of people, it could infect hundreds, even thousands at a time, without them knowing it. In such small doses, it can take as long as four days for the infection to run it's course and kill the host. But then that host rises."

"I have a team ready to go to Sacramento, to the temporary capitol. Four canisters like this can infect thousands. Thousands who will die, then rise again, without a single bite or scratch on them. But to the world, it will appear as if their worst nightmare has come true. That the Z virus has become airborne. My agents will make sure that rumor is planted and spreads. The other nations of the world will panic and use their nuclear arsenals in a last attempt to sterilize the infections. Our nation will retaliate. Most of the nuclear arsenals of the world have been destroyed, but enough remains to destroy the last governments. The last nations. While this goes on, we will all withdraw back into these caves. Seal the doors and wait it out. When we emerge, the process will be done. In these caves are all the knowledge of humanity. Technology, food, medicine, everything needed to rebuild a newer, better civilization."

"With you as their glorious leader."

He laughed. I swear, he laughed as disembodied heads looked down at us. A full belly laugh, shaking his body, ending in a coughing fit. When he could talk again, his face had a sly expression on it. "I won't be the glorious leader, Captain. You will."

"Screw you. Enough of these fucking games."

"This is no game, captain. I'm dying of pancreatic cancer." He sat down. Now, for the first time, he slumped. Finally defeated. "I have less than six months to live, even with the best medicine the Walderberg group had. I would have led these people, Captain. But I can't. My warriors are brave men, good men. And women. But none of them have the education. All of them are scarred. As am I. They've had to kill too many people, sell too much of their souls."

"But you, Captain..." He peered at me, as if he was trying to look through me. "When we captured you, I thought you were just another soulless clerk in uniform. Certainly you don't think you're the first assasin that has come after me? But when we killed your friend Chef and you broke, we injected you with truth serum. I listened to you for hours, Captain. Listened to you weep for Chef, for others, for the people you've killed. For everyone but yourself. I know you better than your own mother, Captain. Beneath the scar tissue, beneath your hatred of yourself, there is still an idealist. A man who wants to save the world."

"You're talking to the wrong man, Colonel. That's not me."

"Oh, but it is, Captain. You would not feel such pain if you didn't care. But you also have the strength to do what has to be done. Right now, you're trying to figure out some way to kill me. Still, surrounded by my men. I'll let you accomplish your mission, Captain."

Lightning struck nearby, thunder echoing through the forested hills.

"What?"

"We made the rule when we first split away from Walderberg, that leadership would be determined in the ancient, bloody ways. Trial by combat. Once the missiles are flying, once civilization is collapsing, I'll let you fight me. Then you will kill me in single combat, in front of all my warriors. You will become the leader of this last hope for humanity. Take them down into the shelters and when the radiation has run it's course, emerge to build a better world."

I leapt at him then. His men grabbed my arms, one of them putting me in a chokehold as I struggled. He watched, looking more and more like a deranged buddha. As they pulled me away, he called out. "We send out the teams tonight, captain, after the feast. Rest up. In a few weeks, all this will be yours."

So they took me back to my cell on the mine levels, locked me in as I cursed them. Billions dead. Billions yet to die. And I could do nothing.

I sat in that cell, listening to the thunder echo through the tunnels from above, cursing the guard I knew was at my cell door.

It was perfect. Everything made sense now, tied up in a neat bundle. I even got the prize at the end. But first, the world had to die.

"Captain, you there?"

It was Hopper, on the other side of the door.

"Hopper?" I threw myself against the door. "Let me out of here!"

Hoppers voice was slurred, with booze or grass, maybe both. "He's dying, man. What will they say about him when he's dead? That he was a great man? That he was a wise man? This is all fucked man, I'm getting out of here."

The lights went dead. I heard the fans on our level stop. There were two bright flashes, spears of light coming through cracks in the door. Then the sound of something heavy falling. The cell door opened. Emergency lights dimly lit the hallway.

I hadn't expected to see Six-gun and Reyes out in the hallway, with Hopper.

The dead guard on the floor was no surprise.

"What the hell?"

"Mr Hopper recovered a wif-come from the chief's body, Sir. He called us in." Six-Gun and Clean both had night vision goggles pulled up over their foreheads. They'd put on flak vests for the occasion. "Those who built this place had a number of emergency exits."

Hopper was weeping. "I'm a judas, man. But he went too far, when he killed Chef. He didn't have to kill Chef, man..."

"Six gun, can you get out the way you came in?"

"Yes. Most of them seem to be out front. They are having some kind of celebration."

I was already stripping my guard of weapons. It looked like Hopper had broken his biggest camera over the guys head to knock him out. "Hopper, where is Kurtz's office? Can you take us there?"

"Next level down, right by the elevators. But we have to get out of here. There's only a few down here, but it won't take them long to find the breaker panels."

"Then we need to move. Go!"

We needed silence. The guard had carried a big machete, razor sharp. Silent.

There was a single guard outside Kurtz office. He almost reached his gun before my machete took off his head.

We went through the door as the lights came back on. I looked for the controls. I'd been afraid it would be some high-tech, indecipherable thing, but it was lashed together. Kurtz was no tech. It looked like my brother's old high-fi stereo system, with hand written notes by the controls. They were childishly simple.

On the walls of the office, half a dozen monitors showed the party outside. Partying in the rain. The gates were still open. Kurtz was under a canopy at the top of the pyramid, as a steer was led to stand by the bonfire.

"Reyes, after I leave, give me ten minutes and then throw these controls here." I pointed. "Any questions?"

"What if they try to get into the office?"

"Throw it early, then shoot your way out. Do not leave this office until that dial has been turned to here." I pointed. Reyes nodded. Good man. "Six gun, did you hear children on the way in? Coming to my cell?"

"Yes. Hopper says there is some kind of orphanage?"

"That's right. You and Hopper go get those kids. Take them out through the emergency exit you used. Do it fast, because in an hour or two, this place goes away. How far away is the blimp?"

"It crashed, five miles away. The ropes ruptured several of the gas bags and we could not stop the leaks. Colonel Kilgore and two of his choppers came in to pick us up, but they are grounded by the storm."

"Get those kids there and call for dustoff. Until the choppers get here, form a perimeter." I grabbed Hopper by the strap of his camera bag. "Dump this camera crap. You need to take the files and specs for the ultrasonics."

"Hang on a second!" Hopper's eyes went wide in desparation. "It's all on Kurtz's laptop. Over there."

He pointed to a battered laptop on Kurtz' desk.

"Take it then. If you don't have it when the dustoff picks us up, we'll leave you for zack."

Six gun gave him an odd look, then looked at me. "What are you doing, Sir?"

"Finishing the job."

I found some camo sticks in Kurtz's desk, as well as a radio. I switched it on. It was recieving, clearly. There must have been a remote antennae. I racked my brain as Six gun and Hopper left, trying to remember the right frequencies and codes. Then I switched it to the right channel and spoke. "Allmighty, Allmighty, this is El-Tac Streetgang. I say again, Allmighty, this is El-Tac Streetgang, over."

Somebody was asleep on the stick. It took three tries to get through. "El-Tac Streetgang, this is Allmighty. Authenticate, over."

"Allmighty, I authenticate Phoenix, Alfa, One-Six. Over."

It took them a minute to check. While I waited, I camoed myself, trying to look like Kurtz's tribal warriors. I hoped that Fifth Corps had kept their shit together and passed on the right codes. A second more for doubt, then "El-Tac Streetgang, this is Allmighty, confirmed. Go ahead. Over."

"Allmighty, allmighty, arclight. I say again, arclight. Following position." I gave the grid coordinates from the map on Kurtz's wall. Appropriate.

"El-Tac Streetgang, this is Allmighty. Arclight confirmed. Time to target one-eight-zero mikes. Over."

Three hours until this place went up. Good enough.

On the monitors, one of the warriors cleaved a huge blade through the neck of the steer. It dropped.

The hallways and mines were empty, all of the guards at the celebration. I only had to kill one man to get to the surface. There, I slipped into the stream flowing out of the mine, into the pool. Moving like an alligator, only my eyes and nose above water. Steam rose from the pool. Darkened by the camo, I was seen by no one as I came up behind the pyramid. Kurtz was up there. Blood from the slaughtered cow was running down the steps of the pyramid into the water.

One of the disembodied heads on the posts looked down at me, as if shocked at it's fate.

I wanted to kill Kurtz. The army wanted me to kill Kurtz. Hell, even Kurtz wanted me to kill Kurtz. He just wanted to go out standing up, like a soldier, not like some wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the dead wanted me to kill Kurtz. They were who he took his orders from anyways.

They were going to make me a Major for this. And I wasn't even in their fucking army any more.

I think I felt it when the ultrasonics switched. A ringing in my ears that I could almost hear. Then, the moans of thousands of dead throats, the sound no one alive today can fail to recognize. The heads on the posts changed expression, vacant stares becoming twisted parodies of hate, of hunger.

I came out of the steaming water, silently.

The screams and gunfire erupted all around me, panic and anger and pain erupting. I looked away from the bonfire to keep my night vision, looking for Kurtz out of the corner of my eyes. I could see one of the gates as a swarm of the dead, a sea of moving corpses poured in, leaping on the warriors, on all of Kurtz's people at their feasting tables, or dancing around their bonfires. Dozens of muzzle flashes erupted, war cries and panicked screams. I saw people swarmed, twisting bodies lifted skyward to a dozen hungry mouths, living voices screaming as they were torn apart. Screams that shook me to my soul, no matter how many times I'd heard them before.

Kurtz came through the flames, his robes smoking, running towards his office, towards his controls. His eyes went wide as he saw me, as I raised the machete. His arms came up.

The blade cut deep into his arms, arterial blood spraying like a fountain, the blade grinding against bone. His blood joined that of the steer on the steps of the pyramid. He slipped and fell, tumbling, screaming.

One of his warriors, the one with the blade who'd slaughtered the steer, came off the top of the pyramid, his blade upraised.

I shot him in the face, emptied a clip into his body, sudden hot anger consuming me, pouring out of me. If I could have torn out his heart, I'd have done it. Then I turned and went after Kurtz.

Half a dozen zac had already come around the pyramid, splashing through the water towards us.

He was trying to rise on his ruined arms. I hacked at his stomach, then his neck. Wild flailing blows, all of my fury pouring out, all my anger hungry for his blood. He fell, covered in his own blood, looking up at me, his eyes wide with sudden terror and pain. The eyes of a god who was seeing his worshippers die before his eyes. The fate he'd consigned the rest of the world to, now coming for him. He spoke one more time.

"The horror. The horror!"

Then rotting arms swarmed over him. Zombies drawn by his blood bit into his torn flesh, pulling him into the water. He disappeared beneath a carpet of dead flesh. If he made any more noise, it was lost in the chaos of the zombie apocalypse.

Kurtz did me one favor, his corpse pulling in dozens of the dead. More zombies were swarming around, corpses driven to ravening fury by the ultrasonics. One leapt at me, mossy and rotted. My machete cleaved open it's skull, spilling out black ichor and brains. I threw away my empty pistol, grabbing one from a holster on the belt of the man I'd shot. Running, I began to shoot, trying to open a path out of the chaos. It was almost reflex, one shot at a time, aiming between the eyes. Some I shot were zombies, others human.

A zombie grabbed my legs as I struggled out of the water, heading to the mine entrance. Sudden terror gripped me, thinking of my exposed ankles and undead teeth. I put two shots into the thing's head as jagged, broken teeth gaped at me.

Even the gunfire was dying out, except around the doors to the mine. Kurtz's men were struggling to close the gates as the living and the dead mingled, flooding through. I pulled a pair of grenades off of the warrior that I'd shot and threw them at the gate.

Bodies were thrown back. The gates gaped open. I threw myself through the gap, before a new tide of the dead poured through.

The living were too busy fighting the dead to bother with me. I was back on the prison level in minutes, the few surviving warriors and Kurtz's people following me. They looked at me, lost. Like sleepers, suddenly awakened from the dream. My anger had poured out of me. I couldn't hate them any longer.

The youngest of them looked at me. Dropped his weapon in surrender. "Mr Kurtz, he's dead."

"That's right. Come with me."

We left.

_The arclight strike comes in half an hour late. Flying at 35,000 feet, the bombers are too high to even be noticed by the sea of undead who mill around on the bloodstained ground. Napalm and thermite rain down on the compound and the mine, incinerating everything above ground. More fire drips into the mines, burns through the barriers and the vent shafts, igniting fires that will burn for years in the old coal seams. The intense heat ignites even the flesh of the bodies, living and dead, greasy fires that burn until there is nothing but scorched bits of bone. _

' 


End file.
